


The Clocks Are All Zeroes

by deliverusfromsburb



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death - Kids' Guardians, Character Death - Doomed Doubles, Doomed Timeline(s) (Homestuck), For Want of a Nail, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16418723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: You and your friends decided to play a game for your birthday. Now the game is lost, your timeline is doomed, and you don't know why.What do you do?





	1. John

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Psiidmon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psiidmon/gifts).



GC: SO H3R3S TH3 PL4N 4G41N  
GC: SK1P R1GHT TO TH3 S3V3NTH G4T3  
GC: F1ND YOUR D3N1Z3NS L41R  
GC: 4ND K1LL 1T 1N 1TS SL33P  
GC: CUTT1NG R1GHT P4ST 4 BOSS B4TTL3 YOU FR4NKLY 4R3NT 3QU1PP3D TO H4NDL3  
EB: wow, that sounds like a great idea!  
EB: is what i would say, if i was not a total dumb ass.  
EB: how stupid do you think i am??  
GC: DO YOU W4NT TH3 HON3ST 4NSW3R  
EB: it’s obvious you just want to mess me up, that’s not even a good speed run trick like jumping over an impassable wall or hitting buttons the wrong way.  
EB: as well as being a pranking master, i am also a gamer extraordinaire, you know.  
GC: DO3S 1T S4Y TH4T ON YOUR 3CH3L4DD3R  
EB: maybe.  
GC: TH1S DO3SNT F33L R1GHT  
GC: 1 DONT TH1NK 1T W4S SUPPOS3D TO GO TH1S W4Y  
EB: maybe you’re just not as good of a troll as you think you are!!  
GC: 1 F1ND TH4T MUCH H4RD3R TO B3L13V3 TH4N TH3 MOST L1K3LY 4NSW3R  
GC: WH1CH 1S TH4T YOU 4R3 FUCK1NG W1TH TH3 PROP3R FLOW OF 3V3NTS H3R3 4ND G1V1NG M3 4 M1NDS 3Y3 4CH3  
EB:  ok, keep coming up for excuses for why you did such a piss poor job of convincing me to walk into your obvious trap.  
EB: maybe i’ll message you again later after i’ve won the game MY way!  
EB: i’m keeping the jetpack though.  
GC: UGH  
GC: YOU KNOW K4RK4T W4S R1GHT YOU HUM4NS R34LLY 4R3 4 P41N 1N TH3 4SS  


\--  gallowsCalibrator [GC]  has stopped trolling ectoBiologist [EB] \--

Turning down Terezi’s offer isn’t what dooms the timeline. It only breaks a chain of events necessary to prevent that outcome. You were supposed to visit Typheus, make your Choice, and die. That was supposed to convince Dave to go back in time and prototype himself. Instead, Dave tosses Lil Cal in to his kernelsprite. It’s at that moment that you’re really doomed.

Not that anyone notices. All you notice is that those annoying trolls have stopped harassing you. Oh, and Dave’s sprite is _really_ creepy. You notice that fast too. Otherwise, things seem to be going great. Still, it’s like everyone in the Medium is playing a game of keep-away with you. You race across planets and through portals, chasing the blue wrapped package that will let you help Jade enter the game. “About time,” you mutter once you have the SBURB client discs running on your computer. That meteor was getting close enough to make you worried. You don’t think people would be allowed to sell a game that could actually kill you with a flaming chunk of rock, so maybe something would’ve happened at the last moment, but the world around you seems pretty serious. The swords the underlings have been carrying around since Dave Entered are sharp.

“I know you would do it!” Jade reassures you through the chat.

This is the fourth time you’ve done this now, so with a little advice from the others, you deploy all of the game equipment and watch as a bright green blindfold materializes over your client player’s eyes. Jade keeps her cool, though, and the piñata shatters into a spray of neon pieces right before the cruxtruder timer hits zero. As you watch a fourth planet shimmer into the existence in the dark sky of the Incipisphere, you think that things might turn out OK after all.

           

“The bad news is, we’re doomed,” Rose says.

The four of you are sitting on the horseshoe of sofas in her living room. Maybe four isn’t the right number – Jade’s dog is curled up at her feet, resting after chasing Rose’s sprite under her bed. Your grandmother clatters away in the kitchen, and you’re resigned to her baking yet another batch of cookies. Jade’s empty kernelsprite bobs by her shoulder. You’d been rushing too much to bother prototyping it, and now you’ve all reached a silent agreement that it will remain empty until you think of something hilarious and/or badass enough to throw in.

Dave crosses his arms.  He actually does wear sunglasses inside – what a dweeb. You wouldn’t mind a pair yourself for going outside, although you won’t tell him that. Rose’s planet is as bright as yours is dark. “So we should just go fuck ourselves or what? Did SBURB bring enough lifeboats for everyone? Good thing we’re all women or children. ”

“Sorry, I had to start with the dramatic one-liner.” Rose has balanced her laptop on her lap. She’s not updating her walkthrough anymore, but she’s been checking other people’s progress. No one else seems to have gotten very far. Earlier, you’d assumed they’d gotten bored. Now you’re not so sure. “The good news is, that’s more a status effect than a prediction. It means we’ve done something wrong and made the game unwinnable, that’s all. In some ways, that’s an advantage. None of the countdowns are running anymore. As far as I can tell, none of the NPCs have any interest in being hostile. All the game mechanics are winding down. But without victory as an option, I’m not sure how we get out of here.”

“I don’t get it,” Jade says. She reaches down to scratch between her dog’s ears. “This isn’t what I saw happening.”

Jade’s explanations for her visions still sound farfetched, but the last time you fell asleep, you’d noticed _something_ weird about the clouds. Prospit exists for sure. You’d seen its moon when you’d woken up on the battlefield just in time to watch it crush her. That dream death hasn’t seemed to leave her with any after effects, but you have to keep checking out of the corner of your eye to make sure she’s not flat.

Rose nods, accepting visions of the future delivered through clouds as a trustworthy source of information. “Maybe there’s a way to get us back on track, then. You seem to know the most about wherever we’ve ended up. Could you fill us in?”

She wraps her arms around Bec’s neck and buries her face in his fur. She’s different in person. “I’m not used to so many people,” she’d explained earlier, although three people doesn’t seem like that much to you, especially since you’ve all known each other for years. “It’s a lot,” she begins, and then straightens up. “I’ll try. But in the meantime, isn’t there something else important we should be talking about?” Now she sounds more like herself – perky and loading all her statements with cosmic meaning. There are a lot of meanings to choose from though. Is she talking about the world ending? Her saving you from a fiery death? Neither are very cheerful subjects. “You knoooow,” she says when the silence drags on. You can almost see the extra letters she’s fitting into the word. “About John?”

“Oh,” Rose says at last. “That’s right. The thirteenth isn’t over yet.”

“How would you rank this birthday?” Dave asks. “Five out of thirteen flaming meteors?”

Last year, your dad brought in a clown as part of his life’s work to get you to share his obsession with them. Or… What you thought was an obsession with them. The revelation of your dad’s clown-free room is going to take some thinking about. “I’ve had worse. All your presents were really great, it’s so funny that you all thought of the same idea. I never thought I’d get to have a birthday party with you all here in person. That’s a better present than I ever expected, even if it did come with some cities being destroyed and stuff.”

“Heartwarming statements like that are why you’re our friend,” Rose says, and slides her laptop off her lap so she can stand up. “From the glimpses I got of your house, am I right in guessing you’re sick of cake? Since I doubt any delivery man is going to come out this far, I can’t offer you a great spread, but we can cap off the festivities by digging out some of my mother’s secret ice cream.”

“Secret ice cream,” Dave scoffs. “What, does she have it in a secret freezer?”

“No,” Rose replies, unshaken. “That’s where we keep the bodies. Although I wouldn’t put it past her to have another one, considering I just discovered a secret passage leading to a laboratory this afternoon. But the secret ice cream is under the frozen peas. I don’t know who she was trying to fool. No one in this household eats vegetables unless they’re tempura fried and ordered off a menu.”

“Parents are so weird,” you say.

Like she’s been summoned by you criticizing your elders, your nanna pokes her head out of the kitchen. This mostly confirms your idea that adults are weird, considering she didn’t bother to use the door and instead stuck her head through the wall. “Have you kids eaten dinner?” she asks.

Before anyone can answer, you decide to avoid any disasters. “Can you cook dinners that aren’t actually ghost confetti?”

She chuckles. “That was a good prank, wasn’t it? I have to catch up for all the years I missed out on teaching you the finer arts of japery. Yes, dear, I can make you real food. You’ll need your strength for what lies ahead.”

The cryptic statements, like the ghost confetti, you can do without. If what Rose says is true, it’s a little late for riddles about your quest. “Isn’t the game over?”

She smiles. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in either my old life or this new one, it’s never to count things out. Look, even an old woman like me is getting a second chance at life. I wouldn’t give up just yet.”

“Is anything going to happen tonight?” Any sort of birthday dinner would be ruined by getting stomped on by a bunch of ogres.

She touches your cheek. It would be comforting if you ignore that she’s doing it with one detached hand while her body remains in the kitchen. “I’ll keep an eye on you. What kind of grandmother would I be if I let anything trouble you on your special day?” It’s a little late for that, but you decide not to say anything so she doesn’t shove a cookie in your mouth to keep you quiet. “I’ll whip something up for you and your friends. You enjoy yourselves, and I’ll stand watch tonight.”

This game guide deal has taught you to listen to her words for double meanings, and you notice she doesn’t say anything about tomorrow. But that’s not for a while, and you might as well get something out of your birthday. You’ve daydreamed about inviting your friends over, but now it’s actually happening. That’s something to get excited about, even if a lot of other stuff has happened that you still don’t know how to feel about.

You’ll have dinner. You’ll have a birthday party with your best friends. And tomorrow… You’ll figure out what’s going on. Rose is always pessimistic. She’s probably exaggerating when she says you’re doomed.


	2. Dave

Shrieks wake you, and you jump to your feet, expecting see a crow tangled in your blinds again. Instead, your shin collides with Rose’s coffee table. “Fuck,” you say reflexively, while a life-size wizard statue eyeballs you like he’s trying to decide whether you’re worth the energy to turn into a toad. It’s a great way to start the morning.

The shrieking is coming from the kitchen. Now that you’re awake, you can tell it’s mechanical. Rose has set the fire alarm off. She fans a plate of blackened gunk with one hand, while Jade shakes her head at her. “I thought I would be a proper host and fix everyone breakfast,” she says when you come in. “The toaster had other plans.”

You snag a brittle chunk of carbohydrate off her plate, pop it in your mouth, and promptly spit it out. “What were these?”

“The waffles formerly known as Eggo. They come highly recommended in all the leading society journals. ” She dumps the plate over the sink, and the ruined breakfast shatters. Behind you, Jade climbs onto the counter and manages to unscrew the fire alarm. Silence falls.

Not really silence, though. Three people up and moving around makes noise, even if it’s just Rose continuing to make self-effacing comments about her cooking skills and Jade crunching her way through a waffle she hasn’t bothered to defrost. John is still sacked out on the sofa. You must’ve been dead tired to sleep through the others getting up. Back at your apartment, letting your guard down that much while unconscious would end in you being dangled out the window as a wakeup call. Here, you don’t think they even drew a mustache on you.

“I guess we’re back to plan A, my mother’s stash of Grape Nuts,” Rose says, and crawls up next to Jade on the counter to reach the cupboard.

“I’m not putting anyone’s nuts in my mouth,” you say.

“Freud forbid we encourage your oral fixation. Any orders for Chez Lalonde?”

“Do you have poptarts?”

She swivels on the countertop to look at you. “Dave. We’re marooned on some sort of pastel dream planet in a video game after narrowly escaping the apocalypse. The nearest supermarket is a universe away. Of course I have poptarts.”

Jade wakes John up (gently – who knew that was an option) and the four of you sit at the table together eating breakfast. It’s the kind of wholesome household scene you’d expect to see on television, the aftermath of a middle school sleepover minus the painted nails. It’s not far from what you’d imagined sometimes, when you thought about the four of you getting to hang out. The only thing you hadn’t factored in was the setting.

Jade offers you all fruit from her sylladex, and when no one takes her up on it, shrugs and picks up an orange. You’re not paying much attention until John yelps, voice ratcheting up an octave, “What are you doing?” Your hand darts to the sword you don’t have until you see what’s freaked him out. Jade, who has just taken a bite directly out of the damn orange, blinks at him. “Eating?”

“The peel?”

“How else would you do it?”

“By taking the peel _off._ ”

She scoffs. “Next you’ll tell me you peel apples too.”

“No, apple skin is fair game. I’m not a fruit scholar, but I’m pretty sure there’s rules to this shit.” You look to Rose for help, but she seems _very_ interested in reading the fine print on the poptarts box. She’s smirking, which you don’t think is because of the riveting description of all the chemical additives. 

Ok, so maybe this isn’t _exactly_ how you’d imagined it.

“After breakfast, I want to look for my dad,” John says around a mouthful of crumbs and fake fruit filling. “If he got away from the imps, he might’ve gone home. Maybe he’s waiting for me.” He plays with the empty poptart wrapper, crunching it between his fingers. “Although he could’ve called.”

“Don’t you have his PDA?” Jade asks.

He frowns and checks his sylladex. “Oh. Yeah. Jeez. Maybe he’s been trying to reach me all night! I don’t think he was expecting to get sucked into an alternate dimension, he’s probably wondering where I left his car. I should go check on him.”

You stand up and brush poptart remnants off your legs. “Want company? A few of those gremlins could get the jump on you and pop a bag over your head, and pretty soon we’ll be getting ransom notes in the mail. I don’t have that much grist to fork over for you.”

“How much do you think John’s worth?” Rose asks. “If we captchalogued him, would the card tell us how much he costs to make?”

“Very funny,” John says. “If you want to hang out, you don’t have to come up with an excuse. I will have you know I vanquished plenty of imps yesterday.”

“And I vanquished a flaming cyclone full of shitty wizards,” you retort.

“My statuary may never recover,” Rose says. “I hope my mother isn’t too upset. More likely she’ll see it as an excuse to purchase more.”

Jade frowns at another of the statues leering in at you from the living room. It’s no wonder Rose is so paranoid with a bunch of fossilized old relics getting their perv on all the time. They’re way better than puppets – their tackiness makes them kind of funny – but you’d hate to run into one in the dark on your way to take a piss.

“Come on,” John says. “I can introduce my dad to one of my real life Internet friends to prove you’re not secretly a creepy old man.”

You break your staring contest with one of the genuine creepy old men in the house. “Does he think that?”

“He never said anything, but that is one of those built-in parental suspicions, I think.”

“This is just my avatar,” you say with a straight face. “I’m actually sixty-nine.”

“Nice,” Rose says.

John’s house is… mostly normal. The clown pictures are weird as hell (is every household burdened with thematic tchotchkes?), and there’s junk from the game strewn everywhere along with smears of black gunk, but otherwise it could pass for the set of some slice of life TV show. It makes sense that John comes from somewhere like this. He’s mostly normal too. You doubt he ever got puppets dropped on his head from a ceiling panel or found fake blood packets in the blender. When he pokes his head into the living room, you check the fridge. No swords.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a fridge full of swords, or puppets in the ceiling panels. That shit builds character. Bro was trying to toughen you up, and it worked. But as you follow John from room to room, you can’t help imagining yourself sitting on the sofa or grabbing something from the fridge, like ghostly images from a life where you weren’t… what? Weren’t you?

Maybe visiting other people’s houses always makes you fantasize about living somewhere else. You’ve never done it before.

“He’s not here,” John finally says. He’s ushered you around, although he didn’t let you see his room. At first he’d been having fun playing tour guide (“Here’s where my dad’s been keeping track of my height on the wall, which isn’t vandalism I guess because we own it and an adult is doing it”; “This is where I threw a gusher and it stuck to the ceiling for a whole month, you can still see the stain”), but now he’s distracted. “I hope he’s not in trouble. Rose said the imps and things have calmed down since the game’s over.”

“Seems like it.” There are a few underlings scuttling around, but none have tried to strife with you. They seem disoriented, like NPCs without a script who keep walking in the walls or repeating meaningless snatches of dialogue. “Why clock in when there’s nothing to do? Might as well take it easy.”

“Maybe he’s down on the planet. It’s a big place, and I haven’t explored at all yet. Oh man, maybe he found his car and is really mad.” John’s thinking out loud and notices you’re not joining in. “You can go back to Rose’s if you want. I want to keep looking.”

“Hey,” you say. “I’ve got nothing but time.”

“This is my land,” John says once you’re planetside. He’s once again giving you an orientation. “Pretty gloomy, huh?”

“Better than getting the obligatory lava level.” At least here you don’t risk tripping into a fiery death or getting ground to hamburger in a mess of rattling gears. “Just don’t tell the US that you found this much oil. They’ll have boots on the ground before you can say petroleum products.”

John looks around critically. “I guess it’s kind of cool. The glowing mushrooms are a nice touch.” He kicks a pebble, and it skitters across the ground to go ‘glunk’ into the oil. “It feels like there’s something wrong though. Like everything is kind of… trapped.”

You’re not sure what he means. Outdoors, without skyscrapers looming over you, you feel like you can breathe. The planet can’t be big – its horizon is close with an obvious curve – but you’re still tempted to start running just because you can. There’s a weight missing that you can’t name, one you remember feeling yesterday when you’d looked out at the blazing sun. “Maybe it’s because it’s overcast?”

“Maybe.” John squints at the horizon. “At least it’s not all smoky. Parts of the oil were on fire yesterday, but this big gust of wind put it out. It sure was convenient. Hey, what’s that?”

You look where he’s pointing, hoping it’s not another firestorm bearing down on you. Instead, you see a glimpse of white on a pavilion emerging from the oil. It’s hard to make out much more. “Could be anything,” you say.

“It could be my dad.” He races to the edge of the lake. A few slimy rocks jut out from the surface, streaked with oil. He steps onto one, holding his arms out for balance. You tense as he wobbles, but then he steadies. “It looks like the oil level went down because of the fire,” he says. “I think we can make our way across. Coming?”

Picking your way across an ocean of oil isn’t your favorite pastime. Sure, you can swim ok, but you don’t know how deep the lake is, and you don’t want that stuff getting in your mouth. A few times, one of your feet shoots out from under you, and once you reflexively grab John’s shoulder to steady yourself, almost sending both of you toppling into the gunk. “Sorry,” you mumble, but he shrugs it off.

“Almost there! It’s a good thing we haven’t found any collapsing platforms or something like that, since this is a video game.”

You nod, although that comparison is feeling less and less fitting for everything SBURB’s putting you through. John forges on ahead, until you make your way to the base of the pavilion. This close, you can’t see over the edge. He scrambles up and worms his way on top with a boost from you below. “Dad?” he’s already calling. “Is that you? It’s me!” Then his voice cuts off, and you can hear him yelp.

“What is it?” You start climbing up after him, but the rock is slippery and hard to grip.  John’s face appears over the rim. He’s frowning.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come up here,” he says.

“Why not?”

He hesitates, and then holds out a hand to pull you up.

The first thing you think is that he looks like roadkill. That’s where you got some of your dead shit – scoping out curbside carnage, deciding what was salvageable. Dead bodies remind you of puppets, the way they can be floppy and stiff at the same time, their obvious emptiness.  His blood is darker than the fake packets in the blender yesterday morning. It’s thick and dried to brown where it’s puddled on the rock and caked into his shirt. The smell hits the back of your throat and lodges there.

The smell, and the sword, are what reassure you that this isn’t another trap. Otherwise, he could be playing dead, ready to spring up when you drop your guard and land you on your ass for not being fast enough. But the sword looks final. Even if he tried to get up, it would keep him down.

John’s been quiet since he pulled you over the edge and you saw your brother, but now he fumbles with his father’s PDA. “We’d better tell Jade and Rose.”

“Don’t,” you say with more force than you mean. The word echoes. He nearly drops it.

“They have to know. What if whatever got him is still around?”

You hadn’t thought about that. You don’t know what could have killed him. Bro always felt like a force of nature to you. It would be like putting out the sun. “OK, warn them, but. Tell them to stay put. I don’t want them coming here. It’s not safe.”

He nods, looking around like a monster might spring from behind the crumbling columns. You should be afraid. Anything that killed your brother isn’t something you want to mess with. And you should be sad, right? That would be the normal thing to do. That would be what the ghost-you who grew up in John’s house, or could’ve, would do. But mostly, you feel relief. He’s not hiding behind a shower curtain or about to sling a cherry bomb at you. He’s not getting back up. Not ever.

What does it say that you don’t want him to?

You can’t say any of this out loud. It sounds shitty, even in your head, and maybe it’s just the shock talking, after all. John’s shooting you the same kind of helplessly sympathetic glances you used when a kid at school said his goldfish died, and you just know he’s going to ask you how you feel. It’s required by law or something. No one ever knows what to say, so you all follow the same damn scripts.

“Are you ok?” he asks.

“Fine,” you say, which is such an obvious lie you have to follow it up. “Surprised, I guess. Thought he’d be too OP for anything in this game. It’s not like we were ever close,” you add, when John stares at you.

“He raised you, didn’t he?” he asks, like those are the same thing at all.

“Sort of. Tossed a few bucks my way for the vending machine. Covered rent. Taught me sick rooftop ninja moves. That bit was worthwhile.”

John breathes out slowly. “I didn’t think you’d be joking right now.”

“Who’s joking?”

“You mean, that’s really what he did?”

“Sure.” His tone puts you on the defensive, and you shift your feet into the beginnings of a fighting stance. “He was a dude with his own life, and I can take care of myself. What else was he supposed to do?”

He’s looking at you like you’re the unfolding tragedy and not the dead man sprawled on the ground. “More,” he says. “A lot more.”

“Whatever,” you say. “He’s dead now, and we’ve got bigger problems.”

“I guess.” John hesitates. This is way past dead goldfish level, which means neither of you know how to deal with it. You can’t flush the guy. “What should we do about him?”

There’s no dirt anywhere nearby, and you don’t want to touch him. Leaving a corpse to rot on John’s magical fantasy land seems rude though. They wouldn’t hold with that in Narnia. Or maybe they would. You never read the books. “There’s plenty of oil. You had birthday cakes all over your house, so there must be matches.” You stiffen your shoulders, keep your tone unaffected. “Let’s light him up.”

John glances over his shoulder at the sea of oil. “What if it spreads?”

“Maybe we’ll get another convenient gust of wind.” When he doesn’t crack a smile, you shrug. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”

John hesitates and then nods. “I forgot I had my jet pack. I’ll go get some matches and be right back.”

He doesn’t take long. You’re grateful. LOWAS is better than your land, but it’s not a great place to sit when it’s just you, a corpse, and a big question mark about whatever killed him. He also brought a bucket you figure his dad used for mopping up. “For the oil,” he says.

“You don’t have to stay. I can come back when I’m done.”

He shakes his head. “I’m staying.”

Your funeral, you almost say, but that’s tacky even for you. Instead, you light a match and pause. After a strife, you’d prod loosened teeth with your tongue to check for a flash of pain.  Now you do that in your mind. Your brother is gone. Never coming back. Does it hurt? Not the way you think it should.

When you toss down the match, it’s not with grief or even relief, but with disgust.

You wait until the fire burns itself out, and then you go home.


	3. Rose

The death of Dave’s brother makes an impression on all of you. Yesterday, the game felt like it had been on a tutorial setting. Sure, people got hurt, but no one you’d known. You didn’t see it. Every potential danger you avoided left you more certain nothing could touch you. Now the training wheels are off.

You haven’t seen your mother.

You’re not worried. It’s not your job to worry about her. It’s supposed to be other way around, and her neglecting her parental duties doesn’t require you to pick up the slack. She vanishes all the time. Doubtlessly she’s found the one bar in the Medium and gotten herself gleefully inebriated. Right now she must be slurring at the bartender and fumbling with her wallet to show everyone the embarrassing childhood pictures of you she carries around either to humiliate you or for blackmail purposes. They’re sandwiched between laminated printouts of wizards, for god’s sake. That’s some sort of insult, if you could work through the deranged layers of her thought process enough to identify the exact burn she means to inflict.

So you’re not worried, except maybe for the sanity of any NPCs who run into her. But you’d like to know where she is. It would be one less variable to keep track of in an equation that has become unexpectedly complex.

John is worried. Their expedition was supposed to locate his father, and instead they found a corpse. That’s enough to stress anyone out, even someone who seems mostly stressed by stress. He wants to go looking again, even though you think it’s better to wait until you have more information.

“He could be in trouble now,” John protests.

“You know how Rose is,” Dave says. Maybe he thinks you can’t hear him, or maybe he doesn’t care. “She’s too focused on Machiavellian ploys of sabotage to try anything drastic. Once she’s got some sleeper cells embedded that she can activate, then we’ll be getting somewhere.”

They don’t get it. They see you looking for information and think you’re not doing anything, when really you’re doing everything. Knowledge is power. Once you knew how to look up takeout places’ numbers and hand over a credit card filched from your mother’s wallet, it didn’t matter if she was unconscious at 4:00 PM and couldn’t cook dinner. Once you knew all the material by heart, you could ward off teachers concerned about your home life. Reading bulleted lists about the psychology of alcoholics helped you match your life to other people’s experiences, so you knew what to expect in the unexpected.

If you understand this game, it can’t hurt you. You’ll be the one in control. You’ve always liked finding cheatcodes and hidden passageways, even when other people say that makes the game too easy. The real game is figuring out how to break it. The others don’t share that mindset. They might not be willing to help. Luckily, there are other people who are, even if the word ‘people’ is debatable. 

Yesterday, Jade had briefed you all on SBURB 101. Maybe that’s why you closed your eyes and opened them on a planet of purple spires and cool shadows. “That’s why you have such terrible dreams all the time, Rose,” she had told you once before. Now you’re ready to meet your nightmares face to face.

What drew you to the window was the singing. You’ve heard recordings of whale song.  It’s mournful and unearthly, but it has its own grace. This sounded like one of those recordings fed through an audio distorter, with octave-spanning shrieks and squeals of feedback. The notes shouldn’t have meant anything to you, but they did.

You’re not stupid. You’ve heard about deals with the devil. But _you’re not stupid._ Most of the characters in those stories trap themselves with their own bad choices. You don’t trust easy. You’ll do your homework and understand what you’re getting into. The elder gods promised answers and the power to get more. That’s worth a calculated risk.

Now, awake and far from Derse, you shouldn’t be able to hear them singing. Somehow, though, their song echoes in the back of your mind. They lodged it there with the assurance that if you want it hard enough, and you listen, they’ll be there. It’s a promise you’re keeping in reserve. You don’t trust the promises of adults – and considering their ages, adult is the only word that fits, even if it doesn’t seem like enough – but you know where they live now. You can always track them down.

“The last time I saw my dad, he was on the chessboard planet,” John says. “He was with your mom, Rose. At least I think it was her. She looked like the photos.”

You’d forgotten to get rid of the stilted family photos prominent in your living room before inviting your friends over for a council of war. Luckily, they’re eclipsed by the wizards. “At least she’s being supervised,” you say. “Were you able to gauge her level of intoxication?”

“Uh… not really.”

“The chessboard planet is the Battlefield,” Jade says. She’s being patient with your fumbling attempts to learn the lore.

“Right… that’s where everyone fights, right?” Now John looks even more worried. “That’s not a good place to be.”

“The fighting only starts at a special time,” she explains. “And if the game is over, I’m not sure they’d keep it up. There are other things on the Battlefield. Farms, castles, even libraries. The carapaces are really a peaceful and artistic people when they’re left alone.”

“Libraries?”

Jade nods. “The queen said there were things written about us in there.”

Does some of her confidence come from being told as long as she could remember that she’s important? It’s the kind of affirmation that most of you seek vicariously from teen adventure novels. Jade may be shy, but once she’s talking about the Incipisphere, she holds court and brooks no interruptions. You’ve spent most of your life yearning for what she was given in her dreams. “That could be worth looking into. Maybe there’s advice for what to do in our situation.”

“And we can look for my dad,” John says, not to be diverted.

“Sure,” Dave says. He’s trying to keep his voice casual, but he hasn’t let go of the hilt of his latest alchemized sword. “Let’s make a vacation out of it.”

The Battlefield isn’t much of a vacation. Its surface is littered with wreckage. Fallen drop ships lay on their sides, hulls split open and gaping. You step over golden rubble Jade picks up to turn over in her hands. The dead are everywhere. From a distance, they look like cut-up dolls until you get close enough to see the blood. The few survivors hang back, watching you. That doesn’t match up with Jade’s claims they view you as legendary heroes. Maybe they’re wondering why you didn’t come sooner. It’s too late to make a difference now.

Jade chases after one and finally gets them to stop long enough to question. “Who did all this?” she asks. There are deep craters driven into the earth. Some of the castles have crumbled. The devastation looks beyond the capabilities of some chess people wielding pole arms.

She’s deep in conversation with the carapace for a few minutes. Then she comes back to join the rest of you. “The Sovereign Slayer,” she says. “He used to be the Archagent of Derse, Jack Noir. On Prospit, they said he was scary. I’ve never met him. Apparently he went rogue and killed both the kings. He won’t even respect that the game is over. That’s not supposed to happen.”

“Where is he now?” you ask.

“They didn’t know.”

“Maybe he’s in another castle,” Dave jokes, as one of the structures looms in front of you. This one, unlike the others you’ve passed so far, is mostly intact.

Jade shudders and looks back at the carapace who’s now retreating into the distance. “I’d rather not meet him.”

Joke or not, the suggestion’s as good as anything you have, so you explore the castle.  Bookshelves line the walls, and you make a mental note to return sometime. They might contain useful insights. Right now, the trail of bloody footsteps demands your attention. They lead you past four banners with different symbols that have been slashed and torn down. Jade frowns and picks up a scrap of golden fabric. “These are our signs,” she says. “It was personal.”

“Our signs?” you ask.

“I told you about hero titles remember? John’s Heir of Breath; I’m Space.” She waves the piece of fabric, which shows part of an embroidered pinwheel. “We have iconography, and it’s been destroyed.”

“So do I breathe really good, or what?” John asks.

“I think it probably means more than that. But it’s part of your journey to figure out what that means,” Jade says earnestly. “In a normal game anyway. But maybe it’s still important. The Prospitians always made it sound like it was the most important thing you could do.”

“Remind me what I am again?” you ask. Even if you share a moon, Jack hasn’t refrained from destroying your banners too. They lie in a heap of purple confetti.

“Seer of Light,” she says promptly.

“That’s right. It still sounds like it suits you better.”

“Skaia works in mysterious ways.”

It rolls off her tongue the same way adults like to recite “Everything happens for reason”. You’ve never liked that saying. First of all, it’s demonstrably not true. Second, even if there’s a reason, that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. That doesn’t mean you have to agree.

The castle’s hallways wind past alcoves for statues, soaring columns, and flight after flight of stairs. Your legs are burning by the time you reach the final landing. At this point, you must be nearly level with the clouds. The others have been hanging back, so you go through the doorway first. That means you’re the one who finds the bodies.

John’s father and your mother are together. John said that’s how he’d last seen them. Now you wonder if they’d known each other beforehand. Your mother’s life contained so many mysteries you never understood. Now you’ll never get a chance to answer them. They must’ve been relaxing on this castle patio. You can imagine the view might have been nice, without a war going on. And your mother was always good at ignoring chaos she didn’t want to deal with. Maybe she found it a charming backdrop.

A wine bottle has fallen over to mix its contents with the blood and water streaking the stones. Of course she would die drinking. You’ve made snide remarks to that effect how many times before? There’s a sense of narrative appropriateness at least, but now you don’t feel like laughing.

Next to you, John’s stare has gone blank and fixed as he looks at his father’s body. Dave and Jade stand in the doorway as bystanders. Jade’s gaze flickers between the three of you, but she must see something in your face, because you’re the one she addresses first. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Rose, are you alright? I mean, I know that’s a stupid question, but I don’t really know what to say.”

“I’m angry,” you say. You don’t recognize your own voice.

“That makes sense. That’s… that’s good.” She grimaces at her own awkwardness.

“I should’ve gone looking sooner,” you say. “John wanted to. I don’t know why I didn’t.” John doesn’t even look your way at the mention of his name.

“You wanted to figure out what’s going on. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I think I’ve done enough of that.” You pull your needles out of your strife deck and equip them. Yesterday, the idea of mixing a wizard statue with knitting needles to make magic artifacts had been funny, a flight of fancy. Now, they sputter and hiss in your hands. “I know what’s going on. Jack is killing people. He needs to be stopped. By me.”

She bites her lip. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” You think you sound reasonable, but she takes a half step backward. “The timers all hit zero a while ago. The game is over, which means whatever I do can’t possibly lose it more than we already have. So if Jack wants to carry on the charade, why not play along? After all, I’ve wasted so much time already scheming, haven’t I? ”

Dave’s knuckles are white on the hilt of his sword. Up until today, he’d dismissed all his weapons as shitty. You doubt he ever expected to use them on a serious adversary. None of you were prepared for this. “Look, that was fucked up of me to say, ok? We could use some planning here. Whatever else my bro was, he wasn’t a slouch in the combat department. You’re usually the one with the good ideas, so don’t throw away your bragging rights by doing anything stupid on your own.”

“I have no illusions of beating him on my own,” you say. “That’s why I’m going to ask for help.”

You don’t wait for volunteers. Instead, you look up at the sky in the direction you can feel Derse looming and open up your mind. The song of the horrorterrors welcomes you into its rhythm. You feel it thrum in your bones and heat up your blood. Here is the answer you were looking for, even if it’s not in the form that you were expecting. It’s not dry texts or incomprehensible riddles. That’s where you’ve tried to search for power, and look where it’s gotten you. Did all your bookmarks on Alcoholics Anonymous pages or notes on psychology ever change your mother’s ways? Did your interrogation of Jade stop Jack Noir from swooping in and ending them for good? He’s proof that learning the rules and regulations will not save you. All of that was a child trying to cover up her own helplessness, reluctant to act and maybe fail. Now the gods have given you power and the ability to see clearly. The answer to this problem is you.

When you look back at your friends, they’re staring. Even John has looked away from his father’s corpse. What are they so afraid of? Jack’s not here. “Don’t worry,” you say. “I can handle this.” Except the words don’t come out in English.

The truth is, you’re past caring.


	4. John

“So,” Dave says. “That happened.”

You’re almost grateful it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that Rose has gone off the deep end in every conceivable way. You needed a distraction, and your friend turning gray and flying off to fight what you guess must be SBURB’s final boss is pretty distracting. That’s a problem you can solve, which is better than the problem you can’t.

Your dad is… The truth keeps escaping you like a piece of paper the breeze caries away every time you try pick it up. It’s better that way. You have enough to deal with.

“We have to help her,” you say.

“I’m not sure she wants our help,” Jade says.

“Yeah,” Dave agrees, “what if we piss her off and she goes all Lovecraft on _us_?”

“She’s our _friend_.”

He sighs. “Ok, if we’re going to be heroes, where did she go?”

The ground shakes. A plume of darkness erupts on the horizon around a castle some distance away. “I think she found him,” you say.

Jade has pulled an impressive-looking rifle out of her strife deck. Meanwhile, you’ve got a hammer. _It’s not like it’ll matter that much anyway._ Thanks, Dave. Not that a sword is going to help him much in this situation either. He probably knows that, but he still says, “Does anyone else know how to fly?”

“I’ve got my jetpack.”

“We passed some transportalizers inside,” Jade says. When it comes to anything in the Medium, you’re willing to trust her expertise. “Some of those might link the Battlefield’s defenses together, or at least every castle controlled by the same faction. We’ll catch up with you.”

They dash inside. You turn away from the scene on the terrace and shrug on your jetpack, which is seeing a lot of use. The trolls did one good thing for you before disappearing. You’d almost welcome one of them spamming your Pesterchum right now. It would give you something else to get worked up about.

You take off and angle yourself toward Rose. The cloud has boiled into a tangle of thorny tentacles that seethe and writhe like the one time you put Twizzlers in the microwave. There’s no rain, but thunder roars, and winds buffet you hard. Once you enter the cloud, the sunlight cuts off. You’re flying through a spooky twilight lit by camera flashes of lightning. Or… is it all lightning? A bright streak tears through the cloud, and you see a nightmare silhouette backlit against its glare. It doesn’t look like any of the chess people you’ve seen before. It has too many limbs and huge ragged wings. Its head looks misshapen at first, until you recognize that stupid jester hat from the doll yesterday. Of course it would come back to haunt you.

You’re so busy watching the figure that you almost crash right into Rose. You correct at the last second and shoot up a few feet before lightening up on the throttle. Her skin has gone entirely ashen. Her eyes glow, and not metaphorically either. She shrieks at you in words you can’t understand, but you get the gist. She wants you to leave.

“Yeah, right,” you say eloquently, and then jerk away in a twisty spiral as Jack comes at the two of you.

He’s got a sword (all of your decisions sure do look bad in retrospect) but he doesn’t use it well. Instead, he brings it down hard like a club between you. Rose rears back, and you slam your hammer into the side of his head. The impact sends you tumbling backward. Your jetpack’s exhaust sweeps across the back of your legs to leave a burning trail. With all the clouds, you can’t tell which way is up. You don’t know how to steady yourself, until a gust of wind hits you in the back and slows your tumble.

Jack dives lower. Rose follows him, launching bolts of white light that take chunks out of his wings. They both pull up maybe ten feet above this new castle’s terrace. It’s barely visible in the gloom.

You fly in and manage to knock that terrible hat off with another hammer blow, although you don’t take his gel viscosity down at all. Fighting with a jetpack is hard. It keeps trying to take you up and forward, and you have to adjust the throttle to stay stable. Sometimes the storm works in your favor. Winds right you when you flip over or push you back toward the fight when you overshoot. Almost as often, though, stray gusts send you flying. One of those times, you bang up against the castle’s tower in time to see Jack slice a gash in Rose’s arm. She doesn’t seem to notice, but it looks bad.

You’re so busy watching the sword that you forget to keep an eye on the tentacles. Jack whips one of them at you and lashes it around your throat. You choke and pull at it, but it’s wrapped tight. Your jetpack keeps trying to tug you upward, but he’s not letting you go. It feels like you’re going to be ripped in half.

There’s a crack, and Jack lets you go with a scream. You suck in a breath. Jade and Dave have run out onto the terrace, and Jade has her rifle on her shoulder. She’s shouting something, but there’s ringing in your ears. Then she shouts again, and you hear, “Get the ring!”

You’d forgotten most of Jade’s talk about magical rings last night, but you’re not likely to forget much longer, because Jack lifts his hand and red tendrils burst out of the small gold ring on his finger. Several bite into the castle’s structure, and chunks of stone topple toward your friends. Dave’s yelling, but you can’t hear the words over the shriek of metal as another tendril rips through your jetpack. You plummet past the terrace and watch your friends disappear under a pile of rubble.

The useless jetpack pulls you down. The wind howls in your ears, and it almost feels like hands trying to pull you back up.

It’s been helping you. Jade said you were what – the Heir of Breath? What does that mean?

Why should Rose be the only one who can fly? 

You wrestle your arms out of the deadweight jetpack’s straps, which is hard in the middle of a freefall. Then you fix your eyes on the dark speck that is Jack Noir. The wind is scattered. It blows everywhere. It’s not going to listen to you just because. You have to make it understand.

Your dad is dead. Jack killed him, and Rose’s mom, and Dave’s brother, and all these chess people who look like broken toys. He might’ve hurt Dave and Jade. He could hurt Rose too. You have to stop him.           

The pain and anger boils to the surface, and you shove it _hard_ in the direction you want to go. This time, the wind listens.

A miniature cyclone cannonballs you upward and into Jack, knocking away a sword stroke that might’ve made Rose a lot shorter. You block his next strike with the handle of your hammer, and his sword sticks deep into the wood. Jack tries to free his weapon, and you hold on to the one he’s almost destroyed. It gives Rose the time to do what she does next.

She points a crackling needle in your direction, and a bolt of light shoots past so close it burns a thin line across your cheek. Jack’s sword falls from a hand that’s no longer attached to his body. You catch his ring with the help of a breeze.

For a moment, Jack hangs in the air, bleeding. Then the tentacles from Rose’s doll and, more importantly, his wings disappear. It’s almost like a scene from Looney Tunes, the way he lingers in the air for a moment and then drops. Maybe, like in a cartoon, he makes a miracle landing on a haystack or a huge pile of pillows. You don’t hang around to watch. Instead you zoom back down toward the terrace, powered by the repeated thought: _Please don’t let them be dead. Please don’t let them be dead._

Rose lands next to you. Close up, she doesn’t look great. Her skin is sweaty, she’s breathing hard, and the cut on her arm still bleeds. She raises her wands –

And then a dust-covered hand breaks through the pile of rocks. Jade’s head follows. Her hair looks white from all the rubble. “Are you guys ok?” she asks, even though she’s the one who had half a building fall on her.

“We beat Jack,” you say, since Rose would just say something incomprehensible like, “Nyurb gu'ilg.”

“That’s great!” She wriggles all the way out, and Dave follows her.

“Never doubt the load-bearing capacity of cinder blocks and weird freaky shit preserved in amber,” he says. “And people gave me shit about my desk. I’d like to see Ikea beat that in product testing.”

“It’s a good thing you had it captchalogued. We hid under furniture,” Jade explains. “And a lot of other very strange things that came from his room? He had to empty out his sylladex pretty quickly.”

“I forgot which hash it was in, so I yelled out all of them.” Dave flicks some dust off his shades. “Sue me, I had a lot on my mind like a painful death. Also, the mummified fetal smuppet wasn’t from my room. I made that with alchemy yesterday. It would’ve made a great paperweight if it hadn’t been pulverized to save our lives. I’ll have to design a fitting memorial for its sacrifice.”

“I think you need better decorations,” Jade says.

You look over at Rose to see if she’s relieved. Instead, she’s wrapped her arms around herself, shaking. This whole grim dark thing can’t be good for her.

“They’re ok,” you tell her, although that should be obvious. “You don’t have to be all spooky anymore.”

“Yeah.” Jade shakes mortar out of her hair. “We won!”

“Haughauuhthr'l...” Behind their glow, Rose’s eyes look desperate. For the first time, a terrible thought occurs to you. Does she _know_ how to turn back?

It can’t be like this: the four of you all alone, with one of you not even speaking English.  “You have to change back,” you say, and your voice catches. You will not cry. You saw your dad lying there on the terrace, you beat Jack, and you didn’t cry. You have to keep it together. You’re the leader.

Rose shakes her head. You think it’s out of helplessness instead of refusal, but you see the same stubborn set in her shoulders.

“Please,” you say, and your eyes are burning now. “My dad’s dead, and your mom, and Dave’s bro, and the whole world.” It’s the first time you’ve admitted any of that, and the words come out painful. Even with you trying your hardest, you feel wetness on your cheek. “We can’t lose you too.”

Rose makes a choking sound. At first you think she’s trying to talk in her demonic language, but then you see black moisture on her face. She covers her mouth and leans forward, shoulders shaking. You step back – maybe she doesn’t want you looking; you wouldn’t – but Jade pushes past you and puts an arm around her. After a moment, Rose leans into her. You can hear her sob as the gray in her skin slowly starts to fade.

You take a half step forward, and Jade jerks her chin until you clumsily curl an arm around both of them and swallow down the lump in your throat. Dave moves closer and pats you on the back just as awkwardly. For some reason, it’s that that makes you half-laugh, half-sob until there are tears running down your face. They don’t strip away any sort of thematic discoloration, but they do make you feel a little lighter.

The four of you stand there until the clouds overhead shred apart and drift away. Finally, in a voice hoarse and cracked from crying, Rose says, “Thanks.”

“Good to have you back,” Dave says, and none of you move for a long time. None of you want to be the one to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's any cipher to Rose's gibberish, so I just pulled some lines from Seer: Descend. If they *are* translatable, whoops.


	5. Jade

A crash breaks the early morning quiet. The windows rattle.

“Rose is blowing up the planet again,” Dave says. “Think she remembers we’re on it?”

You sigh and finish clearing away the breakfast dishes. You’d made fruit salad today from the remnants of your greenhouse, hoping that might encourage Rose to sit down and eat something for once. It didn’t work.

With no escape in sight, by default you’ve become the person in charge. There’s a logic to it. You know the Incipisphere, and you have long, lonely years of experience taking care of yourself. The others are a little surprised by your ability to step up and take control, you can tell. It’s not a side of yourself you tended to share. They might have resisted more, but Dave and John are still in shock, and Rose is. Well.

So Jade Harley, ditzy Internet friend, is now keeping everyone alive. And that means not letting a few magically induced earthquakes prevent you from carrying out the morning routine. Routine is important. Forgetting the monthly maintenance checks on your geothermal power supply a few times has taught you that.

In some ways, you feel more focused than you ever have. You have a job to do and people besides yourself to take care of. Your airheaded dream self no longer snores your life away in a fantasy world, making you nod off in the middle of something important. (Without Prospit, your dreams are different. You drink a lot of coffee now.) In other ways, you’re lost. This isn’t what the eclipse showed you. This isn’t how you expected your story to end. What now?

So you do dishes, because that’s a problem that’s right there.

The house shakes again. A cup teeters on the edge of the counter. You grab for it, but you’re too slow, and it shatters on the floor. “I’ll talk to her,” you say. “What are you guys doing today?”

“Setting up the rest of the transportalizers,” John says. Climbing up and down stairs to reach different return nodes is hard on your legs, so you’ve been linking up your houses, even if Rose’s has become the unofficial home base. “Those diagrams are kind of complicated, though.  We aren’t rocket scientists.”

“Neither am I, and I was fixing them before I was ten. Just pass an object through before testing it on yourselves.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to splinch myself,” Dave says. “I’ll be keeping all arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.”

“Splinch?”

“You know, like in Harry Potter?” When your face remains blank, he says, “Holy shit, you’ve never read Harry Potter?”

You read a lot as a child, including an entire set of encyclopedias. Most of the publications were out of date though, marking the time when your grandfather’s trips to mainland had ended. “My library was pretty limited. I didn’t have a lot offline that was past the nineties.”

“You mean all my jokes were going over your head?”

A lot of their references had, to be honest, but often if you sat still long enough they would hurry on to the next joke without waiting to see if the first had landed. You hadn’t minded. It was enough to have friends. “I still typed lol to be polite.”

He shakes his head. “This is criminal.”

“I’ve got an idea,” John says. “Rose has a bunch of different books, we could read some of them together to get you up to speed with modern life. I could show you all my movies too. It would be something fun to do.”

John’s been looking for distractions. Before you started him on this latest project, he’d been teaching a few consorts how to hold controllers and play a terrible-looking MMORPG. You can’t criticize him for keeping busy when the situation gets bad. It’s something you have in common. Maybe this could even be a way to bring everyone back together. “That sounds nice. I’ll ask her about it.”

Back on your island, Bec tried to keep you away from danger and traces of SBURB, which you suppose amount to the same thing. He must not see the point now. He’s been sleeping a lot, but when you whistle he perks up and starts dancing around for a walk. “Come on,” you say, and step out onto the sand.

He gets a good long walk and goes home for another nap before you find Rose. She’s hovering several feet up, levitating pink stone off of what used to be a temple. Her skin has returned to its regular light brown, but a black haze clings to her that is most visible in sunlight. She flicks with her wands, and the blocks splash into the ocean. You flinch, even though all that hits your face is spray.

“Hi, Rose,” you shout, so she doesn’t send the next batch your way.

You’re surprised she hears you. The temple site is marked by what you guess you’d call a whirlpool. That’s not exactly right, though. It looks more like a hole in the ocean, into which the waters pour endlessly with no regard for physics. The sight makes your skin crawl. It’s like a chunk is missing from the universe. The water roars, but Rose descends to land next to you on the beach. (You’re jealous of her and John for that – you miss flying in your dreams.) “What is it?”

“You missed breakfast.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

You adopt the firm tone you’ve been using on your friends, the one you used to use with Bec when he tried to beg for more scratches while you were busy. (This often led to him teleporting your laptop away. He can be such a bad dog.) “It’s important that you eat.”

“Maybe lunch.” Her eyes drift back to the temple she was busy destroying. Apparently that’s a better use of her time than talking to you.

“What are you doing?” you ask, hoping you sound friendly instead of annoyed.

“Searching for clues. Most of them are about winning the game we’ve already lost, but some might be useful. It’s slow going, though. A lot of the puzzles seem to be missing pieces.”

“Oh, is moving the blocks a puzzle?” That sounds like it could be fun.

“No. I decided to take the more direct route.”

Maybe you’ve never played a game like this before, but that doesn’t sound like the most productive strategy. “I know we all have our own personal styles, but have you thought about talking to people?”

“The Dersites weren’t interested in divulging much.”

You eye her dark aura and the wands in her hands still sizzling with destructive magic. A bloody bandage wraps around her upper arm. She hasn’t bothered to change it. “No offense, but you’re a little scary. Besides, Dersites are on the other team. The Prospitians were always very helpful.”

“Did they warn you about this?”

“Not exactly…” You want to rush to their defense. Rose is always so suspicious of everyone. She reads the most sinister motives into regular actions. (Until some dark gods with unspeakable names offer her magic powers, which she apparently won’t question at all.) But… Skaia made it sound like you would be heroes. It made SBURB sound like a game. The body in the attic had warned you there would be a price, but this? “Still,” you say. “They might know something useful.”

Prospit has changed. Jack’s assault punched holes through buildings and left rubble piled in the road. Without the moon to pull it taut, the great chain snapped back and leveled a series of city blocks. At least the bodies have been cleared away. Without them, the streets are nearly empty. The few Prospitians you see move hurriedly and avert their eyes. None want to stop to talk to you. Maybe you could try harder and make one, but you don’t want to meet their gazes either. You were their princess. Shouldn’t you have stopped this?

“The White Queen always had the most answers,” you tell Rose with false cheer. “Some of the regular citizens can be flighty. Let’s visit her.”

“Should I have dressed up?” Rose smoothes out her dress. You can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. “I wasn’t planning on a royal audience. I might still have bits of temple in my hair.”

“She won’t mind,” you say, thinking of all the times you tugged on the queen’s skirts and clambered up onto her throne as a pajama-clad child. “She likes kids.”

“Even kids from Derse?”

Rose does stick out with her purple dress and aura of darkness, but the Prospitians are avoiding you too. “Don’t worry. She’ll know you’re good.” You watch the last visible citizen disappear behind a slamming door. “They know we’re both trying to help.”

The throne, when you reach it, is empty. This time, you’re desperate enough to grab a passing agent and demand, “Where’s the queen?”

“She has been exiled,” he tells you. “The end of the kingdom is upon us.”

You let him go, as your throat fills up with heat. This isn’t fair. They told you that you would save them. The queen had patted you on the head in this very room and called you a hero.  How did everything get so wrong?

Crying will get you nowhere. You know that much. You’re a scientist, capable of drawing conclusions from experimental results. Tears have never changed anything before, which supports the hypothesis that they never will. So you swallow down the lump in your throat and say quietly, “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

“Were you close?”

When you’d fallen into bed after cleaning up the mess you’d made of your grandfather’s corpse, you’d run right to the queen, and she’d held you while you cried. The tears came easier in your dreaming form. “I’m sorry, child,” she told you, “but be brave. Sometimes pieces are lost, but we will still win the game.” You’d come to her when you felt half-crazy from only talking to a dog and ocean birds, and she’d bemusedly offered an alien royalty perspective on housekeeping problems you’d never had to face before. When you slipped and fell on jagged rocks by the cliffside and bit your tongue until it bled stitching it up, she rested one segmented hand on your unmarked dreaming leg. “Your soul isn’t scarred, princess. Take care of that, and all other hurts will heal.” That made the puckered scar resulting from your sloppy job easier to bear. If you’d been transported into a regular classroom and the teacher asked you to draw a picture of your mother, you would have drawn a doll-like figure wearing a crown without a second thought. “In some ways, she practically raised me.”

Rose hesitates. “The rest of us lost our guardians recently, but you haven’t mentioned your grandfather. John said he saw someone fitting his description. Is he out there somewhere?”

You shake your head. “I’m not sure who John saw, but my grandfather has been dead for years.”

Rose’s eyebrows draw together. All she asks is, “How old were you?”

You turn away to look at the remnants of royal banners dangling from the ceiling. “I was six. But it’s ok. I took care of myself, and the people here were nice to me. I turned out fine.”

Rose is quiet for a moment. Is she angry with you? A few times in the past, she’d probed a little into your situation. You’d always deflected her. You didn’t think anyone would believe you. At the time, it hadn’t felt like lying. “I should have asked better questions,” she says. “That’s what I’m trying to do now, can you understand? I’m not blowing things up for fun. I’m looking for answers.”

“By blowing things up. Maybe you need that sometimes, but if you keep destroying things, there won’t be anything left.” You think of the hole in the ocean back on LOLAR. What happens if the world you’re in tears apart at the seams? Rose might be interested in the answer to that question, and you guess it has some scientific appeal, but you’d rather not be stuck there when it happens. “It’s like with plants. They die back, and then they grow again. That doesn’t mean you can’t take care of them at all, though, and if you take away the seeds, they’re done.”

“You’re living up to your name, Garden Gnostic,” she says, and you smile a little at the goofy alliterative chathandle you picked out years ago. It had made you feel so grown-up and mysterious.

“Working with your hands can help you think all sorts of deep thoughts. Maybe you need to make something too.”

“What would you suggest? Knitting Jaspers a set of booties?” She frowns. “Actually, he no longer has paws.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of alchemized food.”

Some of the hardier plants survived the destruction of your greenhouse cocooned in tarps and blankets, but none of them looked very happy. You captchalogue the plotted ones to be relocated, although the sun/shade balance in the Incipisphere leaves a lot to be desired. Then, you dig into your seed cabinet and pull out some packets. “Do you have a favorite?”

Rose takes a packet dubiously. “Won’t this take a long time?”

“Growing does. It’s slower than tearing buildings apart. Although ivy can do that too, eventually.” You check the packet of seeds she’s holding to identify them. “Peas are fun. The little tendrils they use to grab onto things are so cute. A pot won’t be enough though, we’ll need to make a raised bed. We can work on that later. For now, let’s get your hands dirty repotting this basil. I always feel happier with gunk under my fingernails.”

She spreads out ten fingernails painted glossy black. “I’m not sure that’s my aesthetic.”

“Wear gloves then,” you say, and toss her a green pair with happy frogs all over them.

“You’re really trying to change my nature here, aren’t you?” she asks, but she pulls them on.

You spend the rest of the day gardening.  By the end of it, your nails are nearly as black as Rose’s, and there’s smears of dirt on her forehead where she wiped sweat away. Darkness still billows around her form, but the plants don’t seem to mind. You’ve got a patch of transplanted earth outside her house filled with the promise of future food. It’s nice to think about the future here. It’s even nicer to help make it.

Nanna banishes you both to the bathroom with the command to wash your hands before dinner, and you giggle together as mud swirls down the drain. The water doesn’t wash the shadows off her skin, but maybe something will. Maybe it’ll just take time.


	6. Dave

You’ve been doomed a little over a month when Rose has her big idea. It makes sense. Knight of Time. Time travel. If anyone can turn back the clock, it’s you. If it weren’t for the murders, you’re not sure why you’d bother. Life in SBURB has settled into a routine. Jade supplements your stash of alchemized food with the fastest-growing plants from her garden. The three of you comb the beaches of LOLAR and pick up glittering fossilized shells. When Rose takes a break from her intellectual treasure hunt, the four of you work your way through books pulled off her shelves and take turns doing the voices. It’s not a bad life. Sure, the world ended, and that sucks hypothetically for everyone on it, but for you this is kind of an upgrade.

Rose and John miss their guardians though, so when she comes to you with her idea, you don’t say no.

The tool you alchemize looks like a floating set of turntables mixed with the gears interlocking across your planet. Over the past few weeks, you’ve practiced stable loops – buying extra hours for yourself by hopping backward and then forward again while not letting your lives intersect. You’ve jumped forward too, losing a few hours here and there to make up for the extra ones you’re piling on. You don’t like the idea of being too much older than all the others.

You haven’t told Jade and John about your experiments. That’s something the two of you agreed on. They’d only get worried. The first time you decide to try to change the past, though, you don’t tell anyone. It’s not that you don’t trust Rose. She’s been taking a scientific approach to your experiments, writing shit down and everything. Without her, you probably would’ve killed your own granddad by now, if you had one. (Oh, right, that’s another meteoric bombshell dropped on you. You’ve been hitting on your sister. Thanks, Skaia. Whatever Jade says about it being benevolent, you’re pretty sure the big blue ball in the sky is cloud-videotaping your fuckups for Medium’s Funniest Home Videos. Watch this twelve-year-old stumble ass backward into a Freudian hellpit of yo mama jokes. Guaranteed first prize.) Besides the occasional Oedipus crack, Rose has helped you through everything, but she’s… intense. You can handle the possessed calamari shit and damn, the girl’s not always comprehensible even when speaking English, but the way she’s been driving herself makes you think of the spluttery, quick-burning fuses of your bro’s firecrackers. If this doesn’t work, you don’t want to set her off on another broodfester throes explosion. You’ll try it out and either deliver the good news or keep your mouth shut until you have some.

The two of you have discussed a few theories of what might happen when you change history, and you probed John’s pop culture knowledge for more while trying not to make him suspicious. Rose suggested taking a note with you in case you forget the future, so you scribble something down on a sheet of paper and shove it in your pocket. The plan is to start small. Jump back a short time, make a small change. If it works, then you can work up to fixing the mess you’re in.

You make a few excuses and head back to LOHAC for your maiden voyage, where the heat hits you like an open oven door. Volcanic gas tears at your throat and makes your eyes water, while the clanging of gears sets your nerves buzzing. The whole place makes your mind scream _out_. But no one comes here for that very reason, so you can run your test undisturbed.

There’s a crocodile statue built on a narrow strip of land not far from a return node. You equip your sword and slash through it, and the shoddy amphibian construction crumbles into pieces. One statue destroyed. Timestamp: 4:25 PM.

You pop out your timetables and jump back two hours. Not much changes, except the statue is whole again, like coming back to an area in a video game after you forgot to save. You readjust your grip on the hilt and smash through the crocodile again. One statue destroyed: 2:27 PM. If it’s wrecked now, you can’t wreck it later. The future has been changed, even it’s only by a bit of petty vandalism. Now it’s time to see what happens.

TG: i made it   
TT: I’m thrilled you successfully navigated to the bathroom without help. Keep me posted. If you struggle with lifting the toilet lid, I’ll send a rescue party.   
TG: no through time   
TG: christ im taking 1 step for mankind and past me is taking a piss   
TG: i embarrass myself sometimes   
TT: I talked you into it?   
TG: hey this was my idea   
TG: didnt want you adding another entry into your doomsday book immortalizing all of your failures if it didnt work   
TG: but good news it totally did   
TG: ive got notes and everything we are finessing the SHIT out of this science routine   
TG: could ship it off to a peer reviewed journal and everything   
TG: intermedium journal of chronomechanics catch that sick title i brainstormed right now   
TG: youre still on lolar rn right   
TG: im on lohac by that one croc statue that looks uncomfortably like hugh heffner   
TT: That’s a personal delusion I’m not party to.   
TG: well it doesnt anymore on account of me wrecking its shit   
TG: so ill give you this it doesnt look like hugh heffner   
TG: it looks like hugh heffner would if he was an anthropomorphic crocodile statue and also broken   
TG: point is we can have another conference of war with slightly more information this time   
TG: like during wwii with actual sonar and shit when earlier we were doing the equivalent of poking around on a risk board   
TG: ill be right over   


You close Pesterchum and catch movement out of the corner of your eye. It’s an underling, an amber ogre dragging a sized-up version of your shitty sword along the ground. You ignore it. The underlings don’t mess with you now that the game’s over.

That’s what you think, until it shoves the blade through your chest.


	7. Dave

When you come out of the bathroom, Rose is frowning at her phone.

“What’s up?” you ask. “John need help on another fetchquest?”

She taps on the screen to refresh it and then turns to you. “You could’ve told me you were planning on changing the past today. Or did you decide to speedrun the rest of SBURB on your own?”

“You get way more subscribers that way.” You sit down next to her. “I’ve been thinking I might give it a shot without you popping a shelf full of Tums first, give your stomach lining a break. You’ve only got one digestive system, you know. Actually, no, you’ve got two, but I think they’re reciprocal. No point in giving you autosyncing ulcers. How did you know about that? I haven’t even done it yet.”

“Yes, you have. A future you texted me about it, but now you’re not answering.”

“I’m an unreliable bastard. Good to know I don’t grow out of it.” You nab her phone and check the texts. “Yeah, that’s where I was planning on testing it out. Want me to pick myself up?” You’ve crossed paths with yourself a couple of times. After the first foray into uncanny valley (your face looks different when it’s not in a mirror) you’re not bad company.

“Don’t get distracted on the way back.”

“I’ll fight the urge to finally test out the two player mode of Tony Hawk Pro Skater.”

“There’s a reason none of us are willing to make that sacrifice for you.”

“Bad fucking taste and no sense of adventure.” You toss her back her phone. “I’ll bring him in. You want bad cop, or am I bad cop?”

She raises an eyebrow. A dark aura still clings to her skin like a shroud of mist. Her black nail polish is flaking, but the circles under her eyes mean she doesn’t even need to add shadow. She’d fit in on the set of the Addams family. “Don’t know why I fuckin bother,” you say, and hop onto the transportalizer to LOHAC.

The you from the future didn’t get far. You find him crumpled a few feet away from the ruined statue. Blood trickles down the narrow spit of stone to sizzle into the lava. You’re glad for once of the chemical smell. You – no, him, no, _it_ , yeah, that’s right, _it_ , the body, has been stabbed through the middle. Jack’s dead and gone, and the hole looks too big for him anyway. The body is on its side, knees scuffed like it fell to them first and then over. One hand is pressed to its stomach over the wound. You try not to look at its face.

Your i-shades buzz. Rose is calling you. You blink to take the call. “Is the entire planet a dead zone now?” she asks. “What’s taking so long?”

You clear your throat. You’ve seen bodies before. More than one, at this point. So what if it’s yours? It’s not _really_ yours. Your heart is still beating. You’re still breathing the toxic LOHAC air. Looking at it that way, this doesn’t even count. How would it work to have two of you running around anyway? This is…  Efficient. Clean. “Don’t bother prepping the interrogation room. You’re going to need to do a murder investigation instead.”

A silence. “He’s dead?”

“Real fucking dead. Underling, maybe.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” She’s quiet for another moment. “Did he bring notes?”

You snort out a laugh. Typical Rose. Not losing sight of the mission, no sir. This isn’t her personal tragedy to avenge. It’s a casualty of war. “Sure, I’ll loot the body. Wouldn’t want a good video game mechanic to go to waste.”

“I’m sorry, that was insensitive. I —”

“No, we need to know.” You sidle toward the body. It’s stupid. It’s not like it’s going to sit up and grab you. You’ve been around enough corpses by now to know that they don’t get up again. There’s a piece of paper sticking out of its pocket. You reach in quickly and tug it out without making contact. “Good news. Everything written down, and there’s not even blood on it.”

“That’s something.” Rose breathes out. From her tone, you think she’s struggling between staying businesslike and offering some sort of sympathy. What does this situation call for? Is it the death of a loved one when it’s you?

No. Not you. You need to remember that.

“I’ll bring it back, ok?” You’re filled with the urge to move. To do something. Every second of silence and stillness grates.

“Wait. What should we do with him?” Rose asks. She doesn’t say you, or use your name. You appreciate that.

“Impromptu lava burial,” you say. “Quick and easy, John and Jade don’t have to know.”  The sooner done, the better. Then you can get off this planet and never come back.

“You’re OK with that?” 

“What’s the big deal?” you ask. “It’s not like it’s me.”


	8. Rose

You’re not sure at first. “Next time, we’ll know to be careful,” you say. “Maybe underlings are hostile to players outside their normal timestream.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?” Dave has been quiet. When he returned from LOHAC, he darted right for the bathroom. “Got some blood on me,” he said shortly, and you’d heard the water running for some time. If you’d heard anything else over the faucet, you’re not going to mention it. Now he’s leaning back with his feet up on the table. It would be an almost convincing show of nonchalance if you hadn’t practiced a pose just like it waiting for your mother to come home, to show how much you weren’t waiting up for her.

Your mother. That’s the point of this: to find a safe way to fix your mistakes. Dave is the key, you’re sure of it, but you need more information.

“This is a start. We know the past can be changed, and we won’t remember the original future. Unless, do you?”

“Nah.” He touches his chest. “Good thing too.”

“But we can bring information back.” You smooth out the sheaf of notes. “That’ll be important.”

For trial two, you arrange things so you’re there when he comes back. He pops into view, smashes the statue, and hands you a page still hot from the printer. You take it. An early draft is still on your hard drive. “Did I have any messages for myself?”

“Yeah, watch my back. Let’s get out of here before I get impaled.”

You almost make it. He’s stepping onto a gear ahead of you when it snaps in two and dumps him into the lava below. You rush forward, but it’s clear you’re too late.

Dave senses it when you get back, maybe prompted by your grim expression. “Lava again, huh?” 

You have to take a moment. There’s your brother, unblackened, not screaming, alive.  The last few minutes could almost be dismissed as a nightmare. “How did you know?”

“The smell,” he says. “Hard to forget.”         

By that point, you suspect. You tell Dave to take some time off while you do more research. According to the lore, doomed timelines are cursed. Is this what they meant? 

Trial three: Falling hunk of masonry. Trial four: Basilisk. Trial five: A tumble off a cliff.  You watch your brother die over and over and over again. Nothing you do can save him. Slay one underling, and another slips past your guard. Watch for falling hazards and miss the stone he stumbles over. His face when he travels back gets grimmer. When you take the page of notes saying what you’ve done differently this time, you feel like you’re taking the notice of his execution.

“The way I look at it, I’m still ok, right?” he says after trial five. “When you’re playing a video game, you don’t worry about all the lives you burned. Digital Tony Hawk doesn’t have an existential crisis about all the times he missed his double flip and broke his neck on the rink, because as far as he’s concerned, it didn’t happen.”

“That Pro Skater game is a lot more bloodthirsty than I thought.”

“Good training.” He turns his music up and puts his earbuds in.

After a few more trials, you’re certain. Changing something in the past mean sacrificing the future. Does this happen to the rest of you? Do you cease to exist in the timelines Dave leaves behind, or does the game pick you off one by one? Which is worse? It’s something to brood over late at night. You don’t sleep all that much anymore, only transition between different states of consciousness. Your pastel planet and purple moon are both prisons you seek to escape, but the price is inching higher.

For now, you switch to perfecting stable loops. Dave can buy extra hours without hurting himself, as long as the missing pieces click back together. You try to keep track on paper, but he waves you off. “It’s easier to just go for it,” he says. “I can feel the way it’s supposed to be. know that’s not your style, but I’m the time guy.”

You wonder if he wishes he wasn’t. You wonder how you’d feel if it were you.

This all makes for a lot of time sequestered on LOHAC, where no one goes if they don’t have to. The others notice.

EB: what’ve you and dave been up to? i haven’t seen you guys in a while.   
TT: Sibling bonding retreat. Wouldn’t you want to grow closer if you learned you and an Internet friend you occasionally exchanged insincere ribald comments with were spawned out of the same vat of slime?   
EB: … maybe? you and dave always love your weird niche conversations, i bet you’ve been sitting around one upping each other with snarky commentary about some hipster media content no one’s ever heard of.   
TT: You’ve got me. Yesterday we spent two hours trading sick burns about Mongolian throat singing.   
EB: a niche audience of one person in a tent somewhere appreciates your jokes. or would, if the world still existed anyway.   
TT: Writing advice blogs always say to envision a single person as your ideal audience.   
TT: Also, I think it’s called a yurt.   
EB: oh hey rose!!!   
EB: sorry. jade just stole my computer instead of pestering you separately like a civilized person.   
EB: this conversation isnt set up as a memo   
EB: jeez john jeeeeezzz :P <\- jade   
EB: you will have to guess who is really talking to you at every moment.   
EB: (that was john by the way.)   
TT: The classic riddle. One head tells nothing but lies, one head tells nothing but the truth. One relies on pop culture references, one uses too many emoticons.   
EB: lol you got us there!!!   
EB: maybe you should take a break for a while, you both seem kind of tired.   
EB: the mongolian throat singing will still be there when you get back. or what ever spooky exploits you are REALLY up to.   
TT: I can’t pull the wool over your eyes for a moment, can I?   
EB: no, i am too good for that. i am the pranking master here, do not forget that.   
EB: the puzzle i haven’t solved yet is how dave is involved.   
EB: you’re not introducing him to those evil squid people are you? if he starts acting goth too we are going to be all unbalanced as a group.   
TT: No, he thinks the dark gods are unsavory. Which is true, but he also thinks unsavory is something that’s best avoided, which is a mindset I don’t share. When they start to sing, he turns his music up.   
EB: as should any sensible person trying to survive a lovecraft novel! –gg   
TT: Lovecraft was projecting his severe prejudices and xenophobia, you know.   
EB: so the real monsters were mankind all along?   
TT: More or less. Loud music doesn’t always help with that.   
TT: I’ll look into taking a break.   
EB: well, if you can fit your two best friends into your very busy schedule, let us know   
TT: …   
EB: im sorry did that sound too mean?? :(   
TT: Kind of. But deservedly.    
TT: I’m not trying to blow you two off. I’ve just gotten caught up in things. I didn’t know it was bothering you.   
EB: it didnt seem like you wanted to be interrupted… - gg   
EB: that’s why i messaged you instead of visiting in person.   
EB: i didn’t want to get cursed by your phantom exploits haha.   
EB: you should come back to lolar and we can make critical youtube videos of monastic break dance yodeling or what ever together.   
TT: How could I resist that image?   
TT: I’ll be there. Bring on the yodelers.   


That night, you stare at the remnants of your mother’s personal bar for a long time. The first day of SBURB dealt a lot of damage to your house. After it became clear your mother was never coming back, you’d done what was necessary to make the space habitable. That included relocating most of her private liquor stash to the tunnel underneath the sands of LOLAR, except for a few bottles that John’s grandmother requisitioned for cooking. It would’ve been easier to get rid of them rather than lug dozens of liters down multiple sets of stairs, but something stopped you. They had been important to your mother. Perhaps, if her allotment of free time was any indication, more important to her than you.  

Now, looking at their gleaming rows as you listen to the waves roll in and out, you think you understand. With a bedroom in Skaianet’s laboratory, she must’ve known something. It can be more painful than you imagined, knowing things.

The surf hums in your ears. You pull down a bottle and take a drink.


	9. John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After three rather grim, shorter than average chapters, I figured it was time for a Bonus Beach Episode.

Rose’s house has changed a lot in the past few months. White dog hair and pink cat fur coat the once immaculate sofas, and you’ve tracked sand and chalk deep into the carpet. A few puppets from Dave’s apartment peek out from underneath chairs and tables. He swears he isn’t bringing them and mutters about them developing minds of their own. (You’re sneaking them in and hiding them in different places, but he hasn’t figured that out yet, and you’re not telling.)  Transportalizers are wired into every outlet, a project you and Dave managed successfully without losing any fingers. (Take that, NASA.) Although those are labeled tidily, the bathroom counter is barely visible under a jumbled mess of toothbrushes and hair products. Jade’s plants crowd the window sills, and outside fruits and vegetables twine up trellises and send creepers reaching down toward the sea. Every once in a while, Jade nudges them away, telling the vines they wouldn’t like salt water as if they could hear. 

None of you felt comfortable taking Rose’s mom’s room, so your nanna stays there now, and Jaspers or Bec sulks with her if the other has already claimed the living room. Jade alchemized gravity gauntlets that let her push and pull at her surroundings, and every night she blasts the furniture in the living room out of the way to clear the floor for the rest of you to curl up in sleeping bags. They’re pretty cool, and if you didn’t have your own superpowers, you might make a pair for yourself. She alchemized them out of a bootlegged Half-Life 2 CD and an Iron Man suit she happened to have in her basement. Maybe her grandpa was Iron Man. Maybe Jade is Iron Man. It would explain a lot.

The house isn’t starting to feel like home, exactly. But your house doesn’t feel like home either. It stopped feeling like home the day you realized your dad was never coming back there.  Now, when you walk through the dim hallways to pick up a kitchen implement or a change of clothes, the building feels unfamiliar, and it’s not because you’re on an alien planet. Staying at Rose’s is better. It’s kind of like a very long sleepover! Even if sometimes the other people on the sleepover have to be reminded to have fun.

Today is one of those days. You and Jade managed to successfully guilt Rose and Dave into spending time with you. After three years of exchanging messages and wishing you lived down the street from each other, it shouldn’t take much convincing, but they’ve been acting weird. Still, you are all best friends, and as you pointed out, a beach is _right there_. Lots of people go out of their way to get to beaches. So today is officially summer vacation. You think it might still be, in the real world, although you’ve lost track of time. It doesn’t matter much, since school’s out forever now.

Dave and Jade have both begun constructing elaborate sand civilizations while Rose reads on a towel and shouts out architectural advice. You duck your head underwater and force your eyes open, even when they sting. Wait a second… you’ve got windy powers! You concentrate on the air bubbles billowing around you and laugh out loud when a sphere like an upside down fishbowl forms around your head. This is the best way to go scuba diving.

You were never a champion swimmer at your neighborhood pool, but in the salt water your body feels light. You swim along the sandy bottom until it drops off sharply into the deep ocean. It looks kind of dark down there, so you rifle through your sylladex (ejecting a granola bar, a parcel pyxis, and a spare roll of toilet paper) before pulling out a lump of glowing stone from LOWAS. With that in hand, you push down deeper. There are no sharks to worry about, but the water is eerily empty. You wish there were some schools of fish to swarm around you and nose you curiously, like a welcoming committee. Mounds of dead white coral rise overhead, and you try to imagine the reef alive. The water would look better with more colors. Instead, your light casts sickly green shadows on everything.

At first, you think there are more coral formations in front of you, but as you get closer you realize you’re looking at the hollow ribs of a ship. Most of the wood has rotted away, although a splintering mast still rises toward the surface, and parts of a slimy yellow flag flutter limply in the current. At first you think it might be for Prospit, but the logo isn’t a moon. Smooth ballast stones litter the sand, and among them you see a glitter. You swim down and reach toward whatever is reflecting your light. It’s a necklace, made of thin gold links and holding a pendant shaped like a sun. There’s treasure down here. Maybe Rose was supposed to win it.

Maybe something guards it. As far as you know, this game doesn’t have dragons, but the planet’s denizen must be lurking somewhere. Some of the remaining timbers look like they were crushed by something very strong.

You scoop up a few glittering objects to show the others and then kick toward the surface before Cetus decides she’s hungry. It must have been a long time since her last fish dinner.

Rose greets you when you resurface. “Did you see a giant squid?” she asks, wiggling her fingers.

“No, nothing alive.” That isn’t such a disappointment now, with Cetus on your mind.

“Jaspers will be sorry to hear that.” You can see her cat turning over rocks hoping to scare up crabs. Further down the beach, Bec runs barking toward the waves and retreats when they wash toward him. He growls at a breaker, and several gallons of water teleport a few feet to the left before crashing down. The wave collapses.

“I did find treasure though.” You show off a handful of necklaces and golden coins.

“Were there any clues down there?”

“Just stuff. Besides, I didn’t look for the solutions to any mysteries. It’s our day off, remember? We’re supposed to have fun.”

“We have differing opinions on how to do that.”

You must have missed some inciting incident, because Jade and Dave’s civilizations are now at war. Jade hides behind a wall and lobs chunks of coral at Dave’s reinforced towers with deadly accuracy. “What’s going on here?” you ask.

“He started it,” Jade says, and sticks out her tongue briefly as she considers her next target.

“The evil prime minister overthrew our peace-loving king.” Dave points to a spiky seashell perched at the top of one of his towers. “He craves only subjugation. See that dried out starfish missing an arm? Cruelly overthrown, broken, and banished.”

The starfish does look pretty sad, considering it has probably been washed up on the beach since before Rose’s denizen ate everything in the ocean. “I didn’t know this came with so much lore,” Rose quips, but Jade scoots over.

“Well, if that’s the problem, what if my sand people helped depose the tyrant? That sounds like it would be a lot more productive.”

“I can bankroll you,” you say.

The insurrection is going well until Bec comes bounding through both castles and throws himself into Jade’s arms. The smell of wet dog becomes overwhelming.

“This turned from a mediaeval drama to a kaiju flick,” Dave says from the ruins of his moat.

“We’ll rebuild,” you promise. “Better. Stronger.”

“With a deeper moat this time,” Rose adds.

Jade equips her gauntlets after a little bit of worrying that sand will get into their wiring and carves out a trench with broad sweeps of her arms. “Do you think you can pull water over here with those?” you ask.

She frowns. “I wouldn’t want to try it. If it got into the mechanism, it might cause some problems. You can try blowing some over.”

One failed water spout later, you all settle for buckets. By the time you’ve created your ultimate sand fort, it’s getting late, and your nanna is calling you in for dinner. You brush sand off your legs and troop toward the house with your friends. It’s only when you get inside that you realize you hadn’t thought about the game once. Next to you, Rose and Jade are arguing aesthetic versus practical architecture. (“It doesn’t matter how nice it looks,” Jade says, “I’m not sure you can _do_ flying buttresses with sand castles, they’re really more inclined toward modernism, or maybe Romanesque.”) Dave is poking regretfully at the beginning of a sunburn.  You look like normal kids at the end of a normal day at the beach. Why can’t this be every day? 

Maybe it can be. There’s no point, worrying about what’s happened to you or what might be coming next. It just makes Dave gloomy and Rose distant and Jade snappish. It’s better to play games and have fun, because it’s not like there’s anything you can do about your situation anyway. Like Rose said, the game’s over. There’s no way out.

If there’s any meaning behind being the leader, maybe your job is to keep taking their minds of everything that’s happened in this stupid unwinnable game. It’s for their own good. Worrying will only get people hurt.


	10. Jade

“Ok,” you say, throwing down the controls. “I think I’m done playing your extreme ghost busting adventure for a while.”

“We _are_ kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel,” John admits. He hits pause, and the screen freezes in the middle of your avatars getting drenched with green goo. “Two-person was added as an afterthought, it’s better in multiplayer mode.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, it _could_ be. We don’t know.”

You don’t. Lately, John has been pestering the rest of you to spend more time together, and you’re only playing this game with him because he sulks when he gets turned down. The others weren’t so considerate. Dave keeps vanishing, while Rose locks herself in her room to ponder the mysteries of the universe. Although you don’t blame them for avoiding John’s bargain bin gaming tastes, you’re starting to wonder if there’s something else going on.

“I’m going to play dress-up for a change,” you tell your brother. He waves a vague goodbye as you step onto the pad to your room.

Alchemizing new accessories is a fun way to pass the time, and grist is easy to mine from the placid underlings, although you feel guilty pointing your gun at living creatures, especially the ones with cat faces. You’re not convinced they’re just gaming abstractions, especially after you caught two eating Nanna’s cake while perched on the sofa watching cartoons. John says you sentimentalize everything. You tell him someone has to.

One of the items you created was a pair of glasses that lets you see all over the Medium.  You slip them on over your regular set and will them to look for Rose. She’s in her room, writing something down. No surprises there. Maybe she’s finally working on a new chapter of _Complacency of the Learned_! You enjoyed the parts she let you read, although based on her expression you laughed at the wrong places.

Dave is on LOHAC, which surprises you. None of you like his planet – it’s hot, dangerous, and smelly too – but he hates it most of all. Why would he go back? Maybe you could spy on him and find out, but that seems too sneaky. It would be better to ask in person.

LOHAC’s heat hits even harder after the chill of LOFAF. You gasp at the impact and then cough as sulfuric gas burns your throat. A winged underling perched on the struts by the telepad takes flight at the noise. The planet’s atmosphere is even worse than the close, hot basement rooms back home that held most of the machinery for your island’s geothermal power setup. Even that had left you breathless and dizzy if you spent more than a few hours tinkering with corroded wiring. It doesn’t seem fair for SBURB to give players something so toxic.

“Dave?” you call, but your voice is swallowed up by the hiss of lava and rattle of gears.  You should’ve kept the goggles, but if you turn back now, you’ll have to adjust to the temperature all over again. That’s why you’d pull such long maintenance sessions on the island too, emerging through the maintenance hatch with a sore throat and spots of heat rash across your chest. So instead you pull your collar away from your already sweat-sticky neck and start looking for a node down to the surface.

The flying underlings give you the clue you need. You see a cluster investigating something on the ground, and when you approach they scatter. What they leave behind is Dave’s body.

You freeze. In an instant you are five years old again, coming back from playing with some fun, noisy toys to see your grandfather slumped over the table. His clothes had been dark and sodden too, and when you clutched at his dangling hand his skin felt all wrong. He wouldn’t wake up no matter how loudly you yelled, and eventually Bec pulled you away. You want Bec now. You want someone.

“Shit.” At first you think you’ve spoken out loud, but then someone grabs you and spins you around. You shout and pull away reflexively before you realize who it is. It’s… Dave? There’s sweat plastering down his hair, and his shades have left an angry red ridge on his nose, but he’s there. He’s alive. 

“Shit,” he says again. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.”

You look over your shoulder, then back to him. “Is this a joke?” That’s the only explanation you can think of, but even as you say it, you’re not sold. The body lying there looks too real.

“Look, don’t… Don’t look at it. Let’s get out of here.” He lets you go and then prods you in the small of the back. “Go back to my apartment, ok? I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but I have to get rid of this first.”

“Get rid of what?” you ask. It’s a stupid question, but some part of you refuses to make the connection.

“You know,” he says. “Me.”  
“So those are the rules.” Dave picks at a stain on the sofa, not looking at you. “Make sense?”

“No,” you want to say. None of this makes sense. You listened to his story with a growing feeling of cold horror, and now you wish he’d shout surprise and reveal the most tasteless prank ever, even worse than John pretending to eat peanuts and die. This doesn’t fit with the golden towers of your dreams or the promise that you’d be heroes. This is just cruel.

What you settle for is, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

He pulls a loose thread out and snaps it. “We didn’t want to freak you out. What’s the point of making you guys have to deal with this too? Rose and I are already used to heavy shit.”

That shocks a laugh out of you. It’s short and hard and angry. “That’s what you _assumed._   You made that decision for us, and you never even asked.”

He looks up from tying miniscule knots in the thread. “What are you talking about?”

You stand up, shoving the chair you’ve been perched on back with a screech. Then you beckon until he gets up too. “Let me show you something, Mr. big time hero. Then we can talk about how fragile I am.”

The girl in your attic doesn’t look that much like you. You learned from preserving your grandfather that taxidermy isn’t kind to the human face. But her sunshine yellow gown is unmistakable. When you stand next to her, without her podium the two of you would be exactly the same height.

This is the kind of thing you’d usually never show anyone. You were prepared to take your secrets to the grave, literally. But you’re angry – angry at Dave for lying and dying and making you see it, angry at SBURB for its horrible rules, angry at yourself for falling for all of this. Everything is coming apart today, like opening a maintenance hatch to see wiring gone black and smoking and thinking _Well, so that’s why nothing works_. Why not force the world to acknowledge something ugly about you too? Maybe then your friends won’t think you’re such a baby.

“This is my dream self,” you say. “I grew up with her. My grandfather must have brought her back from the Battlefield somehow. I always knew I would die, but I didn’t realize until it happened that she could die and I could still keep going.”

“Christ.” For someone who keeps embalmed things in his room, Dave looks like he’s about to be sick. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Because no one would believe you. Because the clouds told you they had enough troubles either now or in the future. Because what would it change, in the end? “Why didn’t you?”

He turns away and drags a foot along the base of some kind of screen shrouded by a dusty blanket. “We make a pretty shitty group of friends, huh?”

As the game drew nearer, you tried writing letters. They’d gotten so long, as you tried to share everything you’d learned about the Incipisphere in case you died too soon. At the same time, you tried to express how much they’d all meant to you. You were trying to inscribe thirteen years of preparation and three years of friendship into the paper like pressing flower petals between pages of the phonebook, leaving all the words flat and drained dry. You ripped out page after page when they never came out right, but every draft ended with the same words: thank you for being my friends. Why is that so hard to say when you’re alive?

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” you say. “But lying never works out that way.”

“I was talking out of my ass, huh?” Dave glances at the girl on the podium before looking away again. He’s spent most of his time in the attic staring at the floor. “Never would’ve pegged you as the one with the most skeletons in your closet. Literally.”

“I don’t think the skeleton’s in there,” you say. “Besides, you might have caught up with me.”

“I melt mine down.” If he means that as a joke, it doesn’t land. “Don’t tell John, ok?”

Your dead dream self casts an angled shadow over the floor. It had taken you a while, as a child, to work out what her presence meant, but you got there eventually. Everyone’s secrets unravel, especially the ones that have to do with death. “He’ll learn sometime. Don’t make him find out the way I did.”

“I won’t. I just want to find a good way to break the news. You know how he is about surprises.”

You do. John didn’t take the contents of his father’s room well, all because he’d built up an expectation beforehand that you, personally, think was a little ridiculous. This is another class of revelation altogether. “As long as you tell him sometime.”

“That’ll be a fun conversation. Hey John, miss your dad? Turns out SBURB takes trade-ins, just like the car dealership.” He kicks the screen, and it shudders under its wrapping. A film of dust drifts to the floor. “This game sucks.”

“I didn’t think it would be this bad for the rest of you.” You want him to know that, in case he asks why you’d encouraged them so much on John’s birthday. Of course, what would you have said if you’d known? It’s not like you had another choice.

You might have been a little less cheerful, if you’d known it wouldn’t just be you.

He nods and then meets your eyes. At least, you think he does. His shades make it hard to tell. “But hey, we’re still here, right? That’s just your dreamself up there. Those guys I keep chucking away on LOHAC, they’re only copies. We’re both alive.”

“I guess so.” What have you lost, anyway? Your dreaming self was always flighty, forgetting things and typing gibberish when you were trying to talk to your friends. Her immature behavior is something you don’t have time for now. SBURB has demanded you finish the accelerated maturation you started when your grandfather died, like dumping extra material into a reaction showing signs of slowing down. Being a kid won’t keep you breathing. “You’re right. We’re alive.” You turn your back on the husk of the girl that haunted your childhood. “Let’s get out of here.”

The transportalizer is inside, but after the dusty attic you need a breath of fresh air. LOFAF looks clean compared to the cluttered mess you’ve left behind. The snow stretches before you in a pristine blanket of white, and you give in to the impulse you’ve been fighting since you landed here. You scoop up a handful and launch it at Dave’s head. Most of it disintegrates in midair, but enough crosses the distance and splatters on to his chest. He raises his hands too late to ward it off. “What?”

You clap your hands together. They sting with cold. “I’ve never made a snowball before. I had to try it.”

“Oh, ok, you’re on.” He stoops down, grabs a double fistful, and launches it at you. This time, the clumps dissolve entirely halfway, and you both regard their sad remains with the sense that Hollywood has lied to you. “What gives? I didn’t think you needed a goddamn astrophysics degree to do this.”

You scuff your foot through the cold powder. “Maybe you need a special kind of snow?  Or you do something to it, like melt it a little so it’ll stick together.”

“Sure, let me check wikihow for a 12 step snowball recipe. At least I know how to do snow angels.” He flops backward with a thud that makes you wince. Flakes poof up around him. He doesn’t seem hurt, so you let yourself tumble backward too. Snow creeps into your collar to bite at your skin, but you push your arms and legs back and forth anyway. It’s nice to do something normal after the horrors of the last hour. It makes you feel less like a corpse.

“John and Rose must be winter combat experts,” Dave says. “It comes from living up north where kids go to school with sled dogs. They’ll laugh at our philistine attempts while guarding the dark secrets of how to properly fondle Jack Frost’s chilly balls.”

“Nixomancy,” you suggest.

“They only initiate you into the discipline once you’ve glued your tongue to a flagpole at least once.”

“If they can show us how to do this right, we should have a fight!” Snowball fights are something you’ve seen on television. Everyone looked like they were having so much fun.

“Then I’m teaming up with one of them. Team Texas plus Pacific Island would have a snowball’s chance on LOHAC.”

“Prospit versus Derse,” you declare. You shift position, and more snow trickles down your shirt. This close, you can see individual flakes like lacey pieces of oversized confetti. They dissolve into drops of water when touched by your breath. You’d always wanted to see snow.  To make angels in it, to play in it with friends. To _have_ friends nearby, before you died. In a backhanded way, you’ve gotten your wish. Sure, you’re stuck, but at least you’re no longer alone.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” you ask cautiously. “If we were stuck like this?”

Dave is still flat on his back, and you can’t see his face. The cold has started to seep through your jacket, and you shiver. Does he think you’re being selfish? You know it’s different for the rest of them, who used to have so much more. It’s hard to shed too many tears for a world you were never a part of. Your grandfather was already dead. But this is a way out for him too.

“No,” he says at last. “I guess it wouldn’t.”


	11. Dave

Rose is drinking.

She’s not hiding it exactly, but she doesn’t flaunt it either – just pours a glass or four when she’s frowning over a riddle she ripped out of her planet’s core or trying to design a stable loop that’ll get you back alive. “It takes the edge off,” she’d said when you looked at her sideways. “I’m allowed that, aren’t I?”

You hadn’t said anything. You weren’t sure you were allowed.

It’s been a bad day. You shoved two more bodies into the lava and tried not to breathe in.  Rose has graduated from vodka tonics to straight vodka. You rub your hands on your pants, over and over. She quirks an eyebrow at you and raises her glass. “Want some?”

You don’t. The way she gets when she’s drunk too much scares you. She’s not like herself, and things are bad enough without not knowing who you are too. But it’s been a bad day, and being you doesn’t have much to recommend itself, so, “Fuck it.” You take the glass and toss some down. As soon as it hits your mouth, it converts into what feels like a corrosive gas that prickles up your nose and down your throat. You choke, and the remaining booze nearly sloshes over the rim of the glass before Rose snatches it back. “You get used to it,” she says, smirking.

“I’ll pass,” you rasp.

She leans back and takes a deep swig. “Prude.”

This _is_ like her, secure in her own superiority, sitting proudly on the throne of most fucked up in your four-man squad. If she wants to feel advanced about going downhill in an adult way, she can go for it. “If I get tipsy, I might take a long walk off a short hunk of clockwork, and you need me alive. I have to die at the right moment, remember?”

Her smile vanishes. She half raises the glass, realizes it’s empty, and picks up the bottle.  “I’d rather forget,” she says, and gives you an ironic toast before bringing it to her lips.

You make your escape before she gets worse and run into an even worse houseguest: your own personal feathery pain in the ass. You’re developing an allergy to the color orange. “Hey, Cal,” you say, voice flat.

“Haa haa, hoo hoo, hee hee,” he responds. His voice is a mix of harsh croak and helium that manages to claw right up your nervous system.

“Don’t know why I fuckin bother,” you mutter. “Go mutilate some cattle or something.”

He flutters off, still cackling. He’s never done anything else on the rare occasions your paths cross. Sprites are supposed to know shit, but he’s never bothered to hook you up with the answers. It’s like he knows you’re doomed. Like he thinks it’s hilarious.

Rose has poked and prodded for information in a lot of places, but one avenue she hasn’t tried is her denizen. You figure authority figures of any kind are a no-go, even if they do have fangs. It’s partly out of a desire to do something she hasn’t tried yet, partly out of having shit else to do, that you decide to visit yours.

Hephaestus lurks in the belly of your planet in a lair that can only be accessed by working your way through a network of tunnels that get progressively hotter. The heat makes it hard to breathe. If you pass out here, will anyone find you in time? Maybe you’ll leave behind one last body for someone else to clean up for a change. Then what would Rose do, without her only ticket out? Maybe she’d be better off making her peace with staying here. It would take away the burden of the ethical dilemma that is your life.

You thought at first it might be better with Jade knowing, but it’s worse, because she knows it’s fucked up, and that makes it harder for you to pretend that it’s not. With Rose, it’s strictly business. Rose is good at compartmentalizing. She’s got a shelf in her brain that says personal and one that says important. She’s got one that says brother and one that says tool. Or maybe you’re projecting, since that’s the filing system you’ve been trying to construct, but the process is going about as well as trying to build an IKEA bookshelf. Who the fuck writes those instructions anyway?

Whatever. The point is, a secret doesn’t get any better when you spread it over more people, or at least this one doesn’t. Which raises the question of why dragging a bad-tempered Greek god rip-off into the mix will help, but you’re more or less out of options, and any gamer desperate enough can be driven to actually doing their side quests.

The trip is dangerous for more reasons than atmospheric conditions. At times, the path winds its way along steep drops that reveal either darkness or glowing magma. You pull up short when you turn a corner and find molten rock pouring over the path. The stream occasionally breaks, but never long enough for you to safely jump across. This is the kind of video game fuckshit you thought you’d left behind when SBURB showed its true colors. What’s next, a rhythm challenge?

Actually…You take out your timetables. These days they’re mostly something to do with your hands. It’s your mind that makes them work. You watch the flow until it breaks, catch the moment in your mind… and loop it. Time shudders, and then you have an opening to step across.  As soon as you’re past, you let the moment go, and something in your stomach unhitches. That had felt _weird_.

Looping gets you past the lava. Later, you splice in an earlier fragment of you walking along an even stretch of path to cross a rift in the stone. You’re not sure how you’re doing any of this. It’s like holding a tune in your head. Drop a note, and you’ll lose the whole thing. The only thing to do is keep humming. 

It doesn’t escape you that there’s not another obvious way to visit your denizen. Maybe you’re supposed to have mastered all this already, or the whole trip is a learning experience – some fucked up immersive attempt at a tutorial level. At least the trip is good for something, because when you reach Hephaestus, he won’t talk.

Rose had told you your denizens were supposed to be asleep, although she never said she’d gone to check. You had expected you would have to bang some pots and pans together beneath Hephaestus’ nose, or failing that, give up and go home. Instead, your denizen at least is very much awake. He’s hammering away at something on an enormous anvil, sending sparks flying to scorch black marks into the cavern walls. The sound makes your teeth jar in your skull.

“Hey,” you croak. Then you work up some moisture in your parched mouth and try again. “Hey. Got any quests for me? Can I unlock a cutscene?”

Hephaestus lifts the twisted piece of metal he’s been working on, and you shrink back.  He shakes his head and tosses it into a heap in the corner, then pulls another chunk of red hot material out of a vat and starts pounding. Over the impacts, you can hear him grumbling to himself in a constant tirade. It’s hard to catch more than snatches of words – _timeline, Forge, Choice_ – but he sounds pissed. He’s also ignoring you. Looking at the size of that hammer, you can’t say you mind.

His lack of recognition feels off, though, the same way the Battlefield feels off with armed carapace soldiers milling around waiting for a war that’ll never come, the same way your gut has felt heavy ever since you’ve learned to start sensing if time is flowing right or not. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. The narrative has run awry. He should talk to you, but the game is broken.

What did you want from him, anyway? Were you seeking the secret to time travel without leaving bodies in your wake? You know by now that’s not possible. Maybe what you really want is permission to stop trying: a clear Game Over screen, a notification to cut your losses and accept where you are now. To leave your brother ash and your old life destroyed while you play Little House scratching out a living from a handful of sand. 

It wouldn’t be so bad, is the thing. Not for you. Without a divine mandate, though, that’s not a conversation you can begin. How would you justify yourself?

Before you go, you snag a picture of his hammer with the captchacam to feel like your trip meant something. When you make it to the surface, the air feels almost fresh in comparison.  You don’t stick around to enjoy it. Instead, you head straight for the nearest transportalizer and don’t look back. There’s nothing on this planet that can save you.


	12. Jade

The White Queen told you not to go out during the eclipse, but the White Queen isn’t here anymore. Neither is your grandfather, or Dave’s bro, or John’s dad, or Rose’s mom. You have to be an adult now, and that means taking risks. 

Before the game started, you watched the clouds and used the information they gave you to make preparations, like sending packages or stashing the right item in the right spot. Seemingly small actions can be key to making sure things turn out right. At least, that’s what you believed when you dedicated your life to them. All that preparation didn’t help the four of you this time around. But for all you know, without those tiny machinations, things could’ve gone much worse. Plus, some of your stockpiling and cheerful messages were for the people who would live on Earth long after you, so there’s no reason to believe they aren’t doing fine. You have to remember that things aren’t all about you.

Those visions gave you something to hang on to, like the calendar of chores you kept taped up to the wardrobifier and the reminders on your fingers. They kept you moored when you felt like a little girl left alone on an island, floating further and further away from the rest of the world. The moon is gone now, and when you dream it’s not about anything nice, but maybe you can still help. Maybe something you see will tell you what to do.

You float into the space Prospit’s moon left behind and wait for the world to keep turning.

For a while, there’s nothing but darkness. Then, light bathes your face, and you turn toward its warmth. Skaia is still the most beautiful thing in the Medium. Its bright blue makes your heart lift, and you almost don’t want to see it marred by clouds. Still, there are always clouds, and that’s how you’re going to learn.

You’re not sure what you’re expecting. Images of the four of you going about your daily life, maybe, or scenes of you doing something that will turn this all around. Maybe even snapshots of the future you’ve lost, if the clouds will only show you the Alpha version of events. 

What you see is worse. The clouds are all blank, like you don’t have a future at all.

 

The empty clouds are still on your mind when John asks you if you want to play a board game.

That’s not unusual. You’ve done all sorts of things to pass the time. Dave has made the three of you model for his photography. You and John have improvised some piano and bass duets. Rose keeps a scrapbook of press clippings about the four of you from carapace newspapers. That promised Derse versus Prospit snowball fight did happen, and you and John destroyed the opposition mostly because your brother summoned a snow tornado. (He swears it was an accident. Team Derse insists it was cheating, and an invitation for a rematch still stands.) Right now, though, you’re feeling snappy. “Really? With everything that’s going on, you want to play _Clue_?”

“What else are we supposed to do?” John asks, hugging the box to his chest. You don’t usually shout. Bec has raised his head and put his ears back.

“Something useful. Productive.” Your voice goes shrill, as you reach for justifications that feel like they should be obvious, only to find they’re not there. Keeping busy and checking boxes off a to-do list won’t help you here. No number of calendar days crossed off will bring you closer to your goal. There’s no endgame. No exit. Nothing. “We’re supposed to be playing a game, or living our lives, or on Earth. We’re supposed to have a future.” The strength leaks out of you, and you sink onto the sofa. Bec looks at you and whines.

John sits down next to you. “Maybe we’re supposed to be doing all that, but I don’t know how we can. Is it that bad not to want to be miserable all the time?”

“You understand our situation is serious, right?” John has let pans of sauce burn because he was chasing an imp that was wearing his disguise glasses. He delayed hooking up the last set of transportalizers because he found a DVD he wanted to watch. It may be fitting that Breath is flighty, but it drives you crazy sometimes. The incidents remind you too much of how scatterbrained your dreamself could be. Even in your sleep now, you worry about the mess you’re in. You’ve had to make plans and weigh the odds since you were seven years old. Either John doesn’t get it, or… he hasn’t let himself get it. You remember his fixed smile and willingness to throw himself into work after his father died. You’re no stranger to pushing away grief. His way, though, is something you have trouble understanding. It’s like he doesn’t even know he’s doing the pushing.

“Of course I do, but the rest of you have being serious under control. Someone has to balance that out.” He jiggles the box. “So, _Clue_? I tried to play with Jaspers, but he kept trying to chew on the pieces, and Nanna’s way too good.”

It’s obvious this conversation is going nowhere. “Sure,” you say.

He takes the lid off. “It’s not as much fun with two people. Do you think Dave or Rose would want to join?”

You hesitate. As far as you know, they’re running more tests on LOHAC, but that isn’t your secret to give away. “I… don’t know.”

“I wish they’d hang out with us more.” John shuffles the cards with practiced ease. “Just because they’re brother and sister doesn’t mean friends shouldn’t be important to them. It’s not like that for us.”

“No, it’s not.” Does he want it to be? You haven’t spent done very much with your brother lately, unless he’s nagged you about it first. It didn’t seem important, but with John sitting next to you wondering out loud about absent friends, that excuse sounds cruel. Even if Dave and Rose’s excursions are hardly for fun, maybe you should have set aside more sibling bonding time. Having family nearby is a luxury you never got to enjoy before. Why not enjoy it now? This _Clue_ game could be a start. “I’m glad we found each other,” you say. “I always wanted a bigger family.”

“It’s nice,” he agrees. “If you’d lived with me before, we would have ruled the school. I bet you would have been popular.”

You’re not convinced of that, but it’s nice to imagine all of you living a normal life together: eating your lunches on a long cafeteria table and walking home with backpacks on your backs. It’s a snapshot of a world you never would have been a part of, doomed or not. You made your peace with that when you found the body in your attic. Even without SBURB, how long could you have lasted on that island? What life could you have lived all alone? You made your lists and counted down the days until the world of your dreams became reality for all four of you, and even if you hadn’t fully known the cost, in your heart you had already accepted it. Were you secretly wishing for the end of the world? You shift backward, wishing you could sink between the sofa cushions and disappear. “I’m not so sure. Sometimes I think I’m really a bad person, and people are going to find out one day.”

John blinks, diverted from his speculation of which middle school cliques the four of you would have taken by storm. “Why do you think that?”

You turn a die over between your fingers. “Because I’m still glad we found each other, even though it had to happen this way. I never would have met any of you in person without the game.”

John considers this. “I don’t think that’s true,” he says after a minute. “We would’ve rescued you. You could’ve given us your coordinates, and we could’ve called the Coast Guard. We wouldn’t make you grow up alone. Who would make us eat our vegetables?”

The yield from the garden plots you set up on LOLAR hasn’t always been welcomed with open arms. “I’m not so successful at doing that right now.”

“You’re trying, and that’s what’s important.” John nods, like that’s all the discussion you need to resolve any sort of moral quandary. He sounds like he means it, too. You think back to years spent on your island, sending hundreds of messages and not one distress call. Would you have ever asked for help? Or would you have gone to your grave not wanting to be a bother? What a joke, that it took the end of the world for you to get what you wanted because you didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

Next time, you’ll say something. You’ll stop dedicating your life to small actions and step out from behind the curtain. You want to believe that.

John sits back with a sigh and takes in the state of the board. It looks lonely with only two players. “I guess we’d better start. Dave and Rose aren’t coming.”

“We’ll make it work.” You pick up your detective notebook and balance a pencil on your upper lip like a hardboiled detective’s mustache. “No crime is too dastardly to get past us.”

John tucks the tip of his pencil into his mouth like a cigarette. The two of you make a very goofy pair of noir PIs. It’s enough to make you giggle, which sends your own pencil tumbling to the ground. “I bet we’re having more fun than them, whatever they’re doing,” he says.

You reach out with your free hand to roll the dice. “I bet you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for two short chapters in a row, but the holidays have been busier than I anticipated. Next week's chapter will be longer and move the plot more.


	13. John

You’re not the time guy, so weeks pass without you noticing them. Jade leads Rose through the steps of a dance that was trendy in the twenties to the beat of one of Dave’s new mixes until you tug him away from his laptop, try to twirl him, and dump him on the ground instead. You soberly read comic sans museum placards about purple-spotted dick chompers to a crowd of fascinated consorts while Jade uses her gravity gauntlets to make sand sculptures that Rose, in her best art critic voice, interprets to say what it reveals about the artist’s home life. You take turns on chore rosters and learn what to dread. (Dave considers nacho cheese instant ramen a delicacy, while Rose managed to burn pasta. Jade’s unclear on what counts as cleaning products. No one told you not to put Dawn in the dishwasher.) School would have started by now. You’re idly thinking about birthday presents.

It’s not all cheerful. Rose freaked out when you tried to go into her room to do your turn cleaning, and she only got madder when you said you’d seen messes before. You don’t know what she’s trying to hide, unless she thinks you haven’t noticed how she smells like alcohol sometimes now. You’re not stupid. Dave keeps acting even shiftier than normal, and sometimes you see him slipping food into his pocket. It shows up later stashed in a cupboard or under his sleeping bag, which is just gross, especially if you put your foot in it. Jade is the most cheerful besides you, but you see her watching the sky a lot like another meteor is about to come down and hit you. But you can’t all be nervous all the time, so regular life sneaks in through the cracks. After a while, living on this pastel planet after the apocalypse seems almost normal.

Nothing disastrous has happened for a while, which means Dave has gone back to complaining about ordinary stuff like LOLAR. The two of you are taking Bec for a walk, and the strobing lights have been giving both of you headaches. He massages his forehead. “It’s so goddamn bright here that I keep expecting a pod of Lisa Frank dolphins to leap out and tell me the meaning of friendship.”

You shade your face with your free hand. “At least you’ve got sunglasses, smart guy.”

“Hey, I could alchemize you a pair. Get that authentic Squirtle squad look going.”

“Nah, I don’t want to steal your look!” Bec tugs on his leash as Rose’s house comes into view and, when you don’t pick up the pace enough, teleports away. You scoop up the abandoned leash and hurry into the shadow cast by the building. “I’ll just move into the shade.”

Another glittering cloud drifts past, and your shadowy haven dissolves. “What shade?” Dave says.

You have to admit it’s hard to avoid LOLAR’s ever-shifting rays. “My planet is shady.  I’ve been thinking about visiting my denizen.” The idea rolls off your tongue right when it pops into your head. “That troll was talking about it before they stopped contacting me. She made it sound like killing our denizens would win the game. I figured that was obviously a trap, but maybe if I’d done it we wouldn’t be doomed. Who knows, maybe we could fix everything!”

“My denizen wasn’t chatty, but I never tried to pick a fight. I wouldn’t want to – the guy looked like a D&D-themed pro wrestler. If we’re doing dungeon raids, I want Rose.” He frowns. “At least, she used to be deadly. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any ogres floating downstream with knitting needles sticking out of their eyes. Maybe she’s losing her edge. Either that or PETA got on her case for making them an endangered species.”

“This is just reconnaissance. Want to come?” Belatedly, you remember LOWAS might be a sore subject for him. “We can visit, you know, where your brother is.”

“Pass. I’m cool with coming though.” He nabs the leash from your hand and captchalogues it so you don’t have to go inside. “It’ll be a change.”

The troll had said he would be sleeping, but Typheus is very much awake. You guess you should stop being surprised about them lying to you. You heft the wrinklefucker, but the giant snake at the center of your planet doesn’t lunge forward. Instead, a voice comes from the glowing circle hiding his head. It bounces off the walls of the stone chamber until the echoes dissolve into a hiss. “Heir of Breath.”

“That’s me. I think,” you add. Jade ran through the hero titles a while ago.

“Why are you talking to it?” Dave has his sword out.

“He talked to me first. I’m being polite.”

“What you mean? It just snarled. I’m pretty sure that’s giant snake for ‘You look like a great dinner, I didn’t know Human Hut did delivery.’”

“Only you can understand me,” Typheus says. “My words are for you alone.”

That’s kind of cool. It makes you feel important. “Am I supposed to kill you?” you ask, and wince. “Sorry, that was rude.”

“It is an option available to you.”

“Do I have other options?”

“A good question for a Breath hero to ask.” With a scrape of scales on rock, Typheus slides forward and brings his face close to yours. Dave swears and scrambles backward, but you hold your ground and squint against the light. “You have a Choice. This timeline is lost. You may live out your days unable to fulfill the role you were meant to play, or you may sacrifice your existence here for a better future.”

That also makes you feel important, but in a bad way. Typheus seems to be ok with you asking questions, especially for a boss monster. This is as good a time as any to find out what you messed up so badly. Rose would never forgive you if she found out you passed up the opportunity. You clear your throat. “Why are we doomed?”

Dave follows you back up to the surface with repeated glances over his shoulder. You don’t think he believed you that Typheus is actually friendly. It _is_ a pretty intense first impression to overcome.

“So what did he tell you?” he asks again once you reach the surface.

“It was kind of confusing,” you say. “He isn’t sure why we’re doomed, except that apparently something went wrong, which isn’t very helpful. He wasn’t very helpful about how to fix it, either, although he did say we could. Something about sacrificing my existence? I didn’t like the sound of that very much. It sounds like another dead end. ”

“Yeah, probably.” Dave looks away and then sits down. You settle cautiously onto a rock. It’s too easy here to get oil on your clothes that never comes out. “I’d kill for Pizza Hut right now,” he says. “Not “it’s not delivery its alchemy” with that canned aftertaste. I want actual food.”

This is a confusing change of subject, but you’ll go with it. “I miss TV,” you say. “Is that dumb? I didn’t even watch it that much back home, but you could turn it on and things would be happening all over the world. Now all we get is reruns.”

“God, I’d pay actual physical money to hear what Brangelina or whoever the fuck ate for breakfast just to break up the monotony.”

“I don’t think Brangelina is one person,” you hazard, racking your brain for memories of Entertainment Tonight.

“Whatever.”

“I’d…” You search for a good enough sacrifice to keep this game going. “Trade one of my posters for a chance to go to the movies.”

“One of your posters?” Dave raises his eyebrows. “Shit’s getting serious. Those are heirlooms.”

“They’re all marked up.” You’ll never forgive the imps for that act of vandalism.  Whenever you go home and catch a few in your house, you always kick them out.

Dave scuffs his fingers along the ground and then rubs them together, inky black. “What would you trade for your dad back?”

What kind of question is that? All the fun of your back and forth leaves you like the insides of a Gusher leaking out into a sticky mess. “Anything, duh.”

“Really anything? Like, your arm?”

“What is this, _Saw_? Your brother must’ve rubbed off on you.”

He ignores that. “What if I told you that you could get him back, but. Someone would have to die.”

Man, he’s really getting into this thought experiment. You wish he’d never started the conversation. It only makes you uncomfortable. But you guess you have to play along now. “Who?”

“Me.”

The way he says it makes you stop for a second. “Is this still hypothetical?”

He tries to rub the oil off his fingers, which only leaves dark streaks along his palm. “And you don’t even get him back. That’s the shitty part. It’s some other you, because him dying didn’t happen, so the you who did all this, he’s gone.”

“And he doesn’t have to remember any of it?” That doesn’t sound so bad to you.

“Not a damn thing. Not even what it cost.”

You frown. Of course you’d do it. Throwing away these miserable months and getting your dad back is the best trade you can think of, from your perspective anyway. What would you be losing?

That first night, Rose uncovered a tub of butter pecan ice cream and you ate it out of martini glasses. Jade clapped her hands and laughed out loud when you read chapters of different books to her in silly voices. You knocked Dave’s shades right off his head with a snowball. There are a few memories here you’d rather not lose. If you turn back time, does that mean all those things never happened? They had to have, as long as someone’s left to remember them. But, what if there isn’t anyone?

He’s not being hypothetical. “You.”

“Me.” He sighs. “That’s what Rose and I’ve been working on for the last few months. We figured out how to fix everything, and those are the rules. Trust me, you don’t want to know how we worked them out.”

He’s known how you could save your dad for a while, and he didn’t tell you? Anger flares up inside you, but it hits a wall. You’re not liking hearing it now.

“Rose wants to go,” Dave says. “Jade wants to stay.”

One and one. You’ve never been the tiebreaker before. There are four of you, and if you’re split down the middle you call in Nanna for an adult opinion or give up on the argument entirely. That’s easier. “What about you?”

“I’m just the button. It’s up to you if you want to push it.”

You pushed some buttons in a laboratory once, without any idea of what they might do. He’s alive because of you. Now he might die because of you too. All your anger at him for not telling you has mutated into resentment that he _is_ telling you instead of deciding on his own. What kind of ethical dilemma is that to drag one of your friends into? When people make big heroic sacrifices in your favorite movies, they just do it. They don’t force everyone else to feel bad ahead of time.

“So that’s what Typheus meant.” Some of your denizen’s cryptic statements make more sense now. Is everyone here keeping secrets?

“I figured it must be. It was about time I told you.”

“Yeah.” You hug your knees. “It sure was. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.”

He nods. Behind his shades, you can’t see his expression. He doesn’t wear them all the time these days, and you wonder if he kept them on for this conversation, so that you wouldn’t know if he was mad at you for even thinking about it. You would be, if it were you. But it’s not. You’re the one with the dead dad and no other way out. You’re the one he’s giving this horrible, impossible decision. In this moment, you kind of hate him.

Dave doesn’t bring it up again. You avoid him. He avoids you. Rose doesn’t seem to notice the tension. Too busy drinking, you guess. That’s another activity that rates above spending time with you, along with keeping secrets. Your sister participates in one of those hobbies, but not the other. She pulls you aside to demand what your problem is, and you tell her. “Oh,” she says. “That.” 

“He said you wanted to stay.” 

“I did,” she says immediately, and then adds, “I do. This is better than what I left, and at least we’re safe now.” She twists her fingers together. “But it’s only better if we’re happy.” 

By this point, you know her guardian is long dead. Resetting the timeline won’t fix that.  Maybe that’s why she doesn’t feel the same way you do. “If you could bring back your grandfather, would you?” 

She bites her lip. “Not by having someone else die. I did that for you, remember? When Prospit was falling.” Of course you remember. You’d only woken up in time to see her disappear beneath the falling planet, the pressure of her grip on your arms lingering like the touch of her ghost. You hadn’t asked her to do that. You hadn’t even known. “It was my choice then. It’s different if it’s his.”

“He says he doesn’t want to be the one who makes the decision.”

“Can you blame him?”

Right now, yes you can. “It’s easy for the two of you. Your grandpa’s dead, and I don’t think Dave even cares about his brother. He’s never gone to visit.” You haven’t revisited where you buried your dad either, but that’s different. It’s because you have too many feelings, not too few.

“That’s not fair.” Jade sighs, like this conversation is _such_ a burden. “He didn’t tell you before because he was worried that you’d take it badly.”

“What, that I’d be a kid about it? I’m sorry I’m not as mature as the rest of you, so I don’t get to be a part of adult conversations.” You’re only proving them right by throwing a tantrum, but you can’t stop. “I bet you wish I wasn’t here so you could have your grown up club all to yourselves.”

“That’s not —” Jade groans and buries her face in her hands. “You’re being so difficult.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? _This_ is difficult!” You storm away before she can answer and don’t stop until you’re back in your house on LOWAS. You head straight to your room and collapse face first into bed. The sheets smell musty; you haven’t slept here in months. ‘Idiot boy’ says one of your posters in Jade’s lime green, and when your phone buzzes you don’t pick it up. Now that she’s not in front of you, you wish you hadn’t freaked out. Yelling didn’t make the sick feeling in your stomach go away. You feel like you can’t breathe.

You curl up and listen to your own breathing until you fall asleep.

Your home offers some quiet, but the halls are haunted with memories of your dad. At Rose’s house, there’s no way to avoid running into Dave a few times a day. The world won’t stop shoving this in your face, no matter how hard you try to think of other things. For the first time, everything you’ve tried to bury is bubbling back up, like thick black oil clogging your lungs. No one else is going to say anything. They’ve decided that, too, behind closed doors: this is all up to you. Being the leader isn’t that great if you have to make these kinds of choices.

In the end, the decision, like so many others, is made for you.


	14. Rose

Derse is quiet when your dreaming body wakes. It’s always been the more subdued of the two, even with all the carapacians in mourning for a game that’s lost, but this is new. No one walks the streets outside. No shuttles zip through the sky. All you hear is the creak of the chain as Derse’s moon continues its close orbit.

You follow the chain planetside, guiding your flight by running your hand lightly along the metal. It’s cold enough that you feel a rime of frost under your fingers. When you reach Derse, you land on the purple cobblestones. No citizens are in sight, not even the agents who like to check up on you and write snide editorials about how all the promised heroes came to nothing.  Where is everyone?

You walk forward and stumble, even though for once you’re sober. Your stomach lurches the way it does when you take one too many steps in the dark and your foot comes down too hard. This time, it’s come down on nothing. Derse’s surface has fizzled out, leaving a void that you reel back from. As you watch, a whole chunk of the planet blinks out, leaving cross sections of buildings open like unfinished doll houses. Your foot tingles with pins and needles.

This can’t be good.

You don’t want to wait to wake up, so you hop into a transport node and emerge through one of the gates on LOLAR. Flight in your dream body is all in your head, a matter of belief. With a mental adjustment, you lessen your buoyancy and descend fast, skidding along the minimalist architecture in a controlled fall. Dave sees you flash past and calls, “What’s up? Is your house on fire again?”

“If it was, do you think you’re the first person I’d call?” It’s bickering for history’s sake.  You’re long past being a group of squabbling children fumbling through the collaborative aspects of a video game. Now, you’d trust your brother with your life. Today, you’re going to have to ask him to die for you. Versions of you, anyway. Meanwhile, _this_ you, the one defined by your memories, will fade away if there’s no way to preserve her. The prospect chills you, but you push the fear away. First things first.

Your bed is occupied, but you jump into the empty side, make sure your head rests on the pillow, and reach out to prod yourself hard in the shoulder. Your waking eyes open a moment after your dreaming once close.

Dave comes pounding down the stairs right when you leave your bedroom, and John sticks his head in from the kitchen. It’s his week for dishwashing duty. “What’s going on?”

“Where’s Jade?” you ask. “I’d rather only say this once.”

He gestures with one soap suds-covered hand. “Outside, I think.”

Sure enough, she’s bent over the garden you’ve been cultivating, deadheading some blossoms that are past their prime. It’s one more of artifact of the life you’re going to have to leave behind, like the neat row of transportalizers, the jackets draped over the back of the sofa, or the group photos edging out the old family ones you’ve wrapped up and tucked away. Each lands like a punch. None add up to the hit you will have to ask Dave to take for you.

“Hi,” Jade says. She straightens up and brushes stray petals off her hands. “Doesn’t everything look good?”

“They look nice,” you say after a moment. “Could you come inside for a little while?” You’re trying to keep the panic out of your voice, and the words sound almost gentle. Jade’s brows draw together.

“Is everyone ok?”

“For now.” You can’t keep your gaze from roving, as you try to check whether the beach has started peeling away, if the sky is blinking out into binary and void. There’s no way Jade can’t pick up that something is wrong, and she takes one step away from her project. Dragging her away from that too makes you feel even worse. After the near destruction of her greenhouse, she’s been protective of her new garden. You didn’t stick around to help nearly as much as you should have. She’d be within her rights to sue for alimony. These plants may not exist in a few days from now, but right now they’re important to her. They’d been important to you, too, on a day when you’d really needed it. Surely the world won’t collapse in the next five minutes, and her task can be completed a lot faster by two. “Let me help you finish up first.”

Jade smiles and ejects a spare set of gloves from her sylladex. Somehow she’s modified it so that she can pluck items from just about anywhere. No one’s sure how, beyond the generic explanation of “Space witchery”. You pull them on and follow her lead snapping off withered blossoms. In the next bed over, the peas you planted are a green mist of tendrils twisting toward the sun. They’ll never grow much taller. “I’m sorry I didn’t help more,” you say.

“I know you were busy.”

“I was looking for a way out, but this kept us going here. Making things _is_ nice. ” Coaxing life out of the dirt is a far cry from sweating over corpses on LOHAC. You nod toward the pea trellises. “How long until they’re ready?”

She doesn’t even have to look. “A few weeks. You can see some pods starting now.”

You can, when you look closely. They’re so small that they look artificial as they poke out from the papery remnants of flowers. You reach out and touch one with a gloved hand. “I’d like to grow something together start to finish next time, if you haven’t lost patience with me.”

Jade finishes the last plant and strips off her gloves. “Next time?”

You rise to your feet and bid goodbye to the momentary peace of the garden. “Let’s go inside.”

“So that’s it, huh?” Dave says. You’re all sitting around the coffee table, not unlike your first group meeting after entering the game. For all you know, you’re sitting in the same places.  So many months of effort, and you ended up right back here. There was never a way out. “We’re doomed, and the session is shutting down. There’s no other option but resetting, right? This is what I’m here for.”

John’s eyes widen. Jade bites her lip. Interesting. You hadn’t told them, but it looks like they both know what he means.

“I think so,” you say. “I haven’t found anything on how to reverse the process, and it makes sense. Efficient marshalling of resources. Why expend power on a timeline that doesn’t serve its purpose? It’s admirable in its simplicity.”

“But you’ll die!” Jade protests, digging her hands into Bec’s fur.

He looks over at Jaspers, who is curled up on the armchair. “Maybe not.”

And you thought _your_ plans were risky. “Every time I look at my horror movie of a game guide, I think I should’ve thrown something else in,” Dave explained to the rest of you. “So, why not me? Those suckers seem to be unkillable, maybe I can stick around long enough to help us out. That way, all this time won’t be a total waste.”

Now, your fingers fly across the keys of your laptop. The most recent version of your notes document is pulled up on the screen. Every few minutes, you save the file and your printer spits out more pages. Dave picks up the growing stack and flicks through it. “When do you think everyone will have time to read this? Things were pretty frantic back when we had a time limit.”

“This is a fallback. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give them the highlights as they’re appropriate.”

He nods. “I’ll pass it along in case I kick the bucket. Who knows if being doomed trumps being a sprite or not. ”

That’s what you’d been worried about. You wonder if you should be pleased or depressed that he’s seen through your ruthless practicality that easily. Focusing on the logistics is the best way to keep your mind occupied. It would be easier if he weren’t hovering right over your shoulder. You try to imagine him fluorescent orange, mixed with the dead bird Jade tossed into the kernel in a moment of pity. He notices you looking and raises his eyebrows over the rim of his shades. “When I don’t remember you…” you start.

He sweeps into a mock bow, parodying your New York accent while mangling it with his own. “It’s been a pleasure.”

When you declare your preparations done, Dave clears his throat and then Jade puts a hand on your elbow. “Do you think we could wait until tomorrow?”

The memory of Derse dissolving crawls like an itch on your skin. But her hand is warm on your arm. Your brother looks a few steps from passing out. John hasn’t met anyone’s eyes in hours. You are in no hurry to not exist. “I think so,” you say. “As long as at least one person stays awake to keep watch. It wasn’t moving fast.”

That kicks off a flurry of activity, as people try to take care of anything left undone and prepare for tomorrow. You’re all in agreement that your last night together deserves something, even if you’re not sure what. Hallmark doesn’t make cards that cover this kind of scenario. While everyone else is distracted, you slip away to the remnants of your mother’s liquor stash. It strikes you that the situation demands some kind of dramatic gesture. Should you dump it out? Smash the glass? Then again, all of that will be moot soon enough. Your rebooted self will have to face their temptation all over again.

Someone clears their throat. John is standing between you and the light spilling in from outside. The glare makes it hard to see his face. “We were looking for you,” he says. “Nanna has to keep dumping Jaspers off the counter, he’s trying to lick everything.”

You look back at the rows of bottles refracting snatches of light. He won’t say anything about it if you don’t. “Let’s head back, then,” you say. “We wouldn’t want to miss the hit social event of the timeline.”

He walks alongside you as you exit the passageway. Once you’re out, you turn and channel the dark magic that the gods helped you find in your own heart. There’s plenty of bitterness to go around. You blast the beach until the passage’s ceiling collapses inward to leave a long trench in the sand. All the bottles will be buried deep. “We’ll do better next time,” you say.

“I don’t think I ever beat a game on the first try,” John says. “You make all sorts of stupid mistakes.” At least some of that must be directed at you. You wonder why he never said anything before. Did he want to be polite? Did he think you wouldn’t listen? What would you have done, if someone had tried to stop you? They say it’s dangerous to help someone who’s drowning. So often they only drag you down. “That’s why games need more obvious save points,” he continues. “You should put that in your review.”

It’s been a long time since you touched your GameFAQs walkthrough. When you doomed yourselves, updates from the rest of the world stopped coming. Pity the Internet couldn’t benefit from your extensive product testing. “It would’ve made this easier, wouldn’t it?”

He bumps his shoulder into yours. It’s clumsy, but you appreciate the gesture. “Maybe it didn’t come with a lot of instructions, but since we messed up so much, we know what not to do.”

“If we can control for our own incredible hubris.” You watch the sand settle into its new shape. The movement comes with a faint whispering sound you can barely hear above the surf. “Will you be a save point for me?”

“What?”

“As much as I hate how patronizing they are, sometimes I could use a popup asking me if I’m really sure.”

John is quiet for a moment, and you wonder if he’s going to refuse, to remind you that you’ve spent years blowing off concern expressed by a lot of people, including him. You’d deserve it. That’s not his style, though. “…Sure,” he says. “I can send you flavor text when I think you’re going in the wrong direction.”

“Your princess is in another castle.”

“Just don’t smash the whole building in a rage. That always seemed like a very violent reaction for a plumber.”

“I don’t know, I find home repair always taps into my primal instincts. There’s something about the way a wrench feels in your hand.”

“Well, if you want it, I will give you sage advice from a safe distance, to avoid the wrenches.” He frowns. “If I remember you asked me to. That might be a problem once we go backward in time. Maybe I will feel the urge to be a grizzled mentor figure in my heart, even if I don’t know why.”

“The Dark Side, choose it not.” The joke is helped by the fact that shreds of darkness still curl around your body. The reset will get rid of that, at least. “You might cast yourself better as a Clippy analog. I see you’re trying to tear SBURB down to its foundations. Would you like help with that?”

“Be spooky responsibly.” He tugs your elbow. “Come on, let’s get back to the party.”

“Oh, is it a party now? It felt more like a wake.” Shockingly, no one has been too festive.

“It’s about to be my birthday again, so I say it should be.”

Somehow, if only by the power of positive thinking, the evening does turn into more of a party after that. Since it’s your last night, anything goes. John’s grandmother outdoes herself in the kitchen. You burn through grist betting on the results of bizarre alchemical combinations and then testing them out. No one talks about tomorrow. The four of you end up sleeping the way you did your first night in the Medium, tangled together on the sofa in a nest of blankets and pillows. During your shift on watch, your thoughts drift muzzily, mixing with your dream self’s in a state halfway between wakefulness and sleep. Nestled between everyone probably isn’t the best position to keep you alert, but you’re too comfortable to move.

In your notes for your alpha timeline self, you’d focused on gameplay, with tips on solving problems and avoiding disaster. Maybe you should have added something about this: GameFAQs on your best friends, like what John likes on toast and how Jade gets ready in the morning. It hadn’t seemed professional. But this, too, is information you don’t want to lose.

Maybe you don’t have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter is the first one I didn't have a full draft of a week in advance. I'm hopeful I can still get it out on time, but there's a chance it could be late, especially since I'm off holiday break.


	15. Dave

Jade goes out first. She’s always been good at that, after all, and she’s been sleeping less than she should. The other two take longer. “It’s hard trying to _make_ yourself fall asleep,” John complains.

“Do you want a lullaby?”

“You could go shake my dream self.” He rolls over and pushes his face against the cushions. “I’m working on it.”

You wonder if he’s turned away to avoid your eyes one last time. This morning, he pulled you aside after breakfast. “I wouldn’t have picked this,” he said. “I promise. Maybe it’s what we have to do, but I wouldn’t have said I’d trade you.”

He could just be saying that, but it was nice of him to, anyway.

Rose had insisted you all stick together for your final night so whatever was breaking apart the session couldn’t catch any of you by surprise. That meant you and John couldn’t avoid each other. There are only so many times you can duck into an empty room when you see the other one coming. Having a Greek chorus of girls rolling their eyes at the whole routine doesn’t help. John had broken the silence once you gave up the game of hide and seek. You were leaning against the living room wall, shades biting into the bridge of your nose. You didn’t always wear them inside, but right now you preferred to keep your expression private.

Maybe John thought that accessorizing indoors was unusual, even if you used to do it all the time, because that’s how he started the conversation. “When I got you those sunglasses, they were supposed to be a one of a kind collector’s item. I guess they won’t be anymore.”

“Hey, everything about me will be a collector’s item.” You tapped their mirrored surface. “Keep resetting your timeline to get a shiny Dave.”

John shuffled his feet and then sat on the back of the sofa. Rose yelled at Jaspers when he did that, but she must not have seen the point. “You had them first, so they’re the original, whatever anyone from one of those pawn star TV shows says.”

The original. That wasn’t how you were used to looking at things. “Wasn’t planning on auctioning them off, but I’ll keep a detailed paper trail for provenance reasons in case I need pocket money. I’ll tell them my best bro gave me these, that deserves a mark up.”

 John grimaced when you said “best bro”. The words had sounded forced even to you. “I’m sorry I was a jerk before.”

You sighed. You should have expected he would try to bury the hatchet before they had to bury you. That way he could feel all warm and fuzzy as he snored his way into non-existence. “It’s been a weird few months. Forget it.”

It was a half-hearted absolution, but John took it without question. “Next time we’ll be better friends. I’ll make sure.”

“If Rose’s plan works.”

He gave you a look you weren’t sure how to interpret. “Do you not think it will?”

“Seems like a stretch.” That wasn’t a secret. Rose had remembered bits and pieces of one of your doomed timelines when you’d run a test while she was in her dream self. That was your best chance of remembering, but none of you were sure if it would work the same way for people who weren’t Seers, and you were even less certain about Jade now that she dreamed in the Furthest Ring. You weren’t sure about anything, but they were willing to try everything they could so you wouldn’t be alone. If nothing else, you’d have that memory to hang on to.

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on his shirt. “I was thinking earlier. We all thought my Breath powers were pretty obvious after I started summoning tornadoes and stuff, but maybe there’s more. On my planet, people are always sending messages, and sometimes you get things before you even know you need them. The whole universe might be shutting down, but the mail people on LOWAS are very determined. So maybe I could send us something that would help, like a time capsule.”

You’d assumed his long period of quiet earlier had been sulking. “I thought you wanted to forget.”

He shrugged. “It would be easier, but Rose wanted me to be her game guru. I can’t say no to that, can I?”

You weren’t convinced that sending along a scrapbook like a sunburned vacationer posting their trip highlights on Facebook would help, but it wasn’t like it could hurt. “Sure, go ahead. Hand it over before I leave.”

John put his glasses back on and looked over at you. “You probably think it sounds dumb. But Rose has her GameFAQs, you write those messages to your past self, and Jade used to send those instructions, remember? It’s my turn.”

He wanted to do something. You got that. “The more the merrier. Your one-man postal service is ready for shipments. Don’t miss the deadline, though, because once I’m gone I’m gone.”

You had a chance to exchange what you’re morbidly considering last words with everyone. The last time you talked alone with her, Jade was staring at her empty kernelsprite, which bobbed forlornly in Rose’s linen closet. It had taken hours that first day to convince it to stop following her around. She never prototyped it, worrying a situation would come up where something else would’ve helped more. Apparently she’s only hasty when chucking shit into other people’s kernels. It could’ve been worse, though. You could be staring down a lifetime’s union with a smuppet. “I might prototype my dream self next time,” she said.

She hadn’t talked about her dream self since she dragged you up to the attic to rub the dead girl in your face. You’re not sure if anyone else knows. Prototyping sure would be a way to let the corpse out of the bag. “Make sure you’ve Entered first. Can you imagine the fanart if we have to battle a waifu version of Jack Noir?”

“I’ll be careful, but if not, you have my advance permission to shoot anything with my face on it.” She frowned. “Most things.”

“I don’t shoot. That’s your trademark.” Not that you want to stab any more humanoid creatures either. “We’ll come up with a team safeword, the bad guys will never know.”

“How’s ‘don’t stab me, she’s the clone’?”

“Too predictable. That’s like setting password as your password.”

She smiled a little bit. “Is it hard having another version of yourself around? Alive, I mean?”

You didn’t have a lot of experience with that. Nothing but a few hours of overlap during stable time loops, which you mastered months ago. “They’re the only decent conversationalists around. But they were always going to be me, or they’d already been. This would be different.”

“I could say the same for you.”

You nodded. During stable loops or time-changing tests, you’d always been secure in your sense of self. You’d always been the alpha version. Any deviations died, and you’d told yourself that all those doomed, abandoned Daves weren’t you. So when you crossed over, who would you be?

You didn’t have an answer to that yet.

“I’ve always… been ashamed of her, I guess,” Jade said, her face washed in sickly green light. “It’s silly, but I wanted to keep her shut up in the attic where no one would see. But we’re all trying things over, so.” She closed the closet door with a click. “I thought I could give her a second chance.”

“It’s the hour for it.” There was something comforting about you not being the only one venturing into the waters of the existentially fucked up. SBURB thought it was throwing you for a loop by introducing dream selves, and now you were getting your revenge by spamming Ctrl+V until it submitted. Maybe John would revisit the ectobiology lab and create an army of clones. “Wonder how John and Rose will like there being two of us. We can form an unbeatable voting bloc.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That assumes we share a platform.”

“I’ll have my people talk to your people.” You glanced back at the closet, where her kernelsprite still glowed faintly from beneath the bottom of the door. “I liked what you said about second chances.”

She smiled for real. It was the first time you’d seen that expression since Rose jumped out of the sky with her apocalyptic news. “I’ll vote with you for that.”

Rose was too busy with her notes and schemes to worry about any final sendoffs or last moments of closure. So busy that maybe she can’t shut her brain off, because she takes the longest to fall asleep. She doesn’t talk, but you can see the glint of her eyes when she opens them every few minutes. This was her idea. Even so, it doesn’t look like she trusts her own methods, or maybe it’s just the losing control. When she falls asleep, that’s it. It’s out of her hands. You don’t blame her for not getting comfortable. Eventually, though, the periods with her lids closed grow longer. Then, they snap open, and she half-sits up. “Dave?”

“It’s ok,” you say. “I’m still here.”

“I was worried you’d done it already.”

“Not yet.” You would say she’ll know it when you do, but that’s the point, isn’t it? She won’t. This probably won’t help, but you reach out and squeeze her hand. After a moment, she squeezes back. The two of you sit like that for maybe half an hour, until you feel her fingers relax.

“Rose?” you whisper.

She doesn’t answer.

You disentangle your hands and stand up, shaking out some pins and needles. One of your feet has fallen asleep. Guess you should get used to that. Rose’s head is cocked awkwardly – you reorient a pillow so she looks more comfortable. Jade’s blanket has slipped, and you pull it snug up to her chin. John’s face is still turned away from you, but you straighten his glasses so they’re not digging into his nose.

There’s only so much housekeeping you can do. At some point, it turns into stalling.  You take it in: your three best friends and the home you carved out for yourselves over the past few months. It could’ve been better, but it could’ve been worse. Soon the versions of you who lived there will be one more ghostly hypothetical, a way your lives could but didn’t go.

“I’ll remember,” you say out loud. And then, because goodbye sounds too final, “See you soon.”

The transportalizer takes you to LOHAC, and you climb to where your roof was before Jade built it up. No point traveling back and plummeting ten stories to your death. The timetables hover and hum at your sides. Now that you’re here, your fingers itch to spin them and get it over with. Toss in your hand, draw again. Better luck next time.

Before you lose your nerve, you do it.

The going feels harder this time, like you’re running against the pull of a bungee cord. Then the finality of your break with the alpha snaps across you like that cord breaking. You can feel the change the moment you’re back on track. It’s like surfacing out of the deep end, your ears popping as the pressure lifts. You’d assumed the heavy feeling in your stomach all came from dread.

For all of Rose’s research, you’re not sure why you’re doomed. Going back to save the Titanic is novice mode in comparison. At least you’d have a big-ass iceberg to aim for. Now, you’ll have to trust your instincts and pay attention if you feel events swing off course.

Those instincts are immediately cast into question when you step around the air conditioning unit and almost run into yourself. He turns around, in the middle of texting someone. John, you think. It’s been a while.

TG: hang on    
TG: something came up  


Your past self is pretty damn quick to accept all this. He took a lot on faith back then.  You still do. Like you’d told John, it’s the genre savvy ones who make it through when their lives are turned into a horror flick. After the explanations, you empty your sylladex at his feet. Talk about new game plusing, the lucky bastard. This set will get so much for free. He’ll even get your name. One thing, though, you don’t give away. John pressed his message into your hand before curling up on the sofa to go to sleep. Now, you unfold the piece of paper.

hi! this is john, which you could probably tell by the handwriting, heh. i’m sending this message through dave, so if you got it, thanks dave! if the mail people on lowas are hiring, i will write you a recommendation for sure.

i’m not going to say ‘if you’re reading this, that means i’m dead’ or anything cliché like that, because i’m not! none of us are dead. you just might not remember being us right now. that could be because of some dumb meta physics rules i don’t remember seeing in the terms and conditions when i installed sburb, or it could be because you don’t want to remember a bunch of bad things that happened. i don’t like doing that either, but there are lots of good things to remember too! hopefully dave brought back pictures of the best stuff, like how i destroyed everyone in a snowball fight. or the one time the tabloids ran celebrity profiles on us! rose was so offended she wrote a letter to the editor. anyway, you should remember all that, and that way even though we went back in time we didn’t lose anything. instead we can get better, and i will not have to tackle rose and subdue her with some of jade’s stuffed animals to prevent another round of demonic possession.

p.s. does anyone remember where those game discs were? it took a really long time to find them when we were trying to help jade start playing, and i would rather skip that step.

It’s goofy and heartfelt the way John’s letters always are, and you take a moment to smooth it out before snapping a picture and messaging it to the three of your friends. Then you wait, as behind you your past self begins sifting through the pile of captchalogue cards you tossed in his direction. There’s a kernelsprite floating nearby with your name on it, but first you want to know. Three Pesterchum accounts are buzzing. In three towers on distant moons, three dreamers roll over in bed and, hopefully, dream of something else. You are all reaching from the future into the past, trying to build a human chain with nothing but wishes and words. Isn’t that what long distance friendships are all about? The four of you found each other across time and space before you knew you were siblings and partners in a fantastical quest, back when you were four strangers sitting behind computer screens. Words and stories made you real to each other. They can do it again. It doesn’t matter to you which plan works. All you want is for one of them to. So you wait, and you try to believe in the theory that everyone deserves second chances. Even doomed doubles like you.

Your phone buzzes. You look.

GG: are you ok???  
GG: that note was so cute by the way, was i supposed to write one too? :o  
GG: right now though theres a big meteor headed my way again and bec is getting nervous!  
GG: im going to remind john to get me into the game already  
GG: it would be a bummer if after all that work we had to start over again because he didnt get his hands on those discs in time  


EB: how did you react to seeing yourself? was it weird?  
EB: oh man, i hope things didn’t go hay wire like in some movies where people freak out and try to murder their past self, that would be bad.  
EB: don’t murder yourself!! that is the advice from a movie expert.  
EB: you see, i am doing the wise game sage thing already.  


TT: I think it worked.  
TT: Things are a little fuzzy, but I distinctly remember penning a strongly worded missive to the Dersite press corps. I’ll have to thank John for immortalizing that for me. That was a good idea, sending a personalized note too.  
TT: Based on the notifications in my inbox, it looks like we’re all on track. You won’t be in this alone for take two, that’s for sure.  
TT:  So now that we’re armed with the debatable benefit of hindsight, let’s get it right this time.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the beginning, this was always a story about foregone conclusions. Once a timeline is doomed, there is only one way out. But just because your ending is inevitable doesn’t mean you can’t find moments of joy and laughter along the way. And sometimes, the inevitable can be negotiable. Thanks for reading along with me, and I appreciated all the kind comments you left throughout the story! I’m glad other people enjoy reading about the Beta kids and their (sometimes strained, but always heartfelt) friendship as much as I enjoy writing about it.


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